Why we can't have “char” enum types

Question

I want to know why we can\'t have \"char\" as underlying enum type. As we have byte,sbyte,int,uint,long,ulong,short,ushort as underlying enum type. Second what is the defau

Answer 1

I know this is an older question, but this information would have been helpful to me:

It appears that there is no problem using char as the value type for enums in C# .NET 4.0 (possibly even 3.5, but I haven't tested this). Here's what I've done, and it completely works:

public enum PayCode {
    NotPaid = 'N',
    Paid = 'P'
}

Convert Enum to char:

PayCode enumPC = PayCode.NotPaid;
char charPC = (char)enumPC; // charPC == 'N'

Convert char to Enum:

char charPC = 'P';
if (Enum.IsDefined(typeof(PayCode), (int)charPC)) { // check if charPC is a valid value
    PayCode enumPC = (PayCode)charPC; // enumPC == PayCode.Paid
}

Works like a charm, just as you would expect from the char type!

Answer 2

Character enums would simply be strings wouldn't they? I'm not sure what other benefit you would derive from a character enumeration?

As others have said, the default type is int for an enumeration.

Answer 3

Pretty much everything has been said already about that. Just wanted to say you can use extensions if you use a lot of "char enums":

public enum MyEnum
{
    MY_VALUE = 'm'
}

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static char GetChar(this Enum value)
    {
        return (char)value.GetHashCode();
    }
}

class Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        MyEnum me = MyEnum.MY_VALUE;
        Console.WriteLine(me + " = " + me.GetChar());
    }
}

Answer 4

See ECMA standard 335, Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), in Ecma International. The CLI allows the underlying type to be char or bool but C# and VB.Net don't allow it. For what it is worth, C++/CLI does allow System::Char as the underlying type.

I presume that C# and VB.Net don't allow char and bool as the underlying type for syntactical reasons only.

Answer 5

This is workaround I'm using

enum MyEnum
{
    AA = 'A',
    BB = 'B',
    CC = 'C'
};

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    MyEnum e = MyEnum.AA;
    char value = (char)e.GetHashCode(); //value = 'A'
}

Answer 6

Technically, you can't do this. But, you can convert the enum to a byte and then convert that to char. This is useful if your goal is to have something like this (realizing this is impossible to do:

public enum CharEnum
{
    one = '1'
}

You can do this, however, by using ASCII byte values and then converting:

public enum CharEnum
{
    one = 49,
    two = 50
}

You can then convert to byte and to char to get the char value. It is not really pretty, but it will work, if getting a char is your ultimate goal. You can also use unicode and an int value, if you need chars outside of the ASCII range. :-)