Enums with numbers

[Pat Short]

hi,

how do I define an enum of number & non alpha characters. For e.g. if I want to define an enum of 1,2 & 3 I thought I could do the following

enum myenum {"1", "2", "3"};

or

enum myenum {1, 2, 3};

I know that I could define strings with these values as follows

    
String one = "1";
String two = "2";
String three = "3";
 
enum myenum {one, two, three};

but that does seem right either. What are the rules about what an enum value can have?

Thanks

[Steve Luke]

Like all Java identifiers, enum names must be alpha-numeric starting with an alphabetic character.

[marc weber]

As Steve said above, enum identifiers follow the same rules as other Java identifiers. By convention, enum identifiers are typically all uppercase.

But I'm not sure if that's what you're asking.

Note that each Enum instance has an int ordinal that represents the Enum's "position in its enum declaration, where the initial constant is assigned an ordinal of zero." This value is returned by the method ordinal(). For details, see the API documentation for java.lang.Enum.

Additionally, you can add data and behavior to your Enums. See this Enums article for details (note the Planet example about half way through).