May 7, 2002 - Defining and Using Enumeration

Yehuda Shiran May 7, 2002
Defining and Using Enumeration
Tips: May 2002

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
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Enumeration is common to many other programming languages. Enumeration associates a symbolic name with a set of predefined discrete values. Enumeration is very powerful in making your application a lot easier to maintain. Enumerated variables can only assume values out of the predefined set. As in other programming languages, you define an enumerated data type with the enum statement. The following enum statement enumerates the major TV networks in the US:

  enum tvNetworkType {
    ABC,
    CBS,
    NBC,
    FOX
  }
When you define a variable of type tvNetworkType, it can assume only one of the four values above: ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX. Let's declare such a variable:

  var myFavoriteStation : tvNetworkType;
Let's assign it now the value of ABC:

  myFavoriteStation = tvNetworkType.ABC;
To learn more on JScript .NET, go to Column 108, JScript .NET, Part II: Major Features.