Importing enums

[Deepak Borania]

I have a few doubts regarding the static members,enums and importing them from packages.

Let's say we have a following enum declaration :

  
package mypkg;
public enum Result{ CORRECT,WRONG,UNANSWERED}

My first question is whether the 'Result' is "public static final" ?
If I want to use above enum declaration in another class, what import statement do I have to use if I want to use enum constants as
1. 'Result.CORRECT'
2. 'Result result=CORRECT'
3.

for(Result result:Result.values()){
    System.out.println(result);
}

Please explain.

Thanks

[Jesper de Jong]

Whether Result is 'public static final': What do you mean exactly? It's public, because you specified that yourself in your code. It's not static, because top-level classes (and enums) cannot be static. You can regard it as being final, because you cannot extend an enum (you cannot create a subclass using an enum as the superclass).

1. import mypkg.Result;
2. import static mypkg.Result.*;

More about 'import static'.

What is your question about point 3?

[Campbell Ritchie]

You might find help about your question 3 in the Java Language Specification.

[Deepak Borania]

Thanks Ritchie and Jesper for a quick reply.

Whether Result is 'public static final': What do you mean exactly? It's public, because you specified that yourself in your code. It's not static, because top-level classes (and enums) cannot be static. You can regard it as being final, because you cannot extend an enum (you cannot create a subclass using an enum as the superclass).

By static I meant , if I could use an enum constant like 'CORRECT' without creating an enum reference like:

Result result = new Result();

Also can you please explain me the use of constructors, members and 'constant-specific class bodies' inside enum declarations. I always thought, coming from a C/C++ background, that enumerations are a mean to define named constants. So whats the concept behind the implementation and use of constructors, members and 'constant-specific class bodies' inside enum declarations?
Aren't plain old classes with nested enum declarations better for the purposes, because having all those constructors etc. in a enum declarations make them seem like classes to me anyway.
Maybe its a very simple concept that I'm missing about Enums in Java, I only started learning it a week back.

Thanks

[John de Michele]

Aren't plain old classes with nested enum declarations better for the purposes, because having all those constructors etc. in a enum declarations make them seem like classes to me anyway.
Maybe its a very simple concept that I'm missing about Enums in Java, I only started learning it a week back.

Deepak, in Java 1.5 or later, enums are classes, and the older int constant style is deprecated.

John.

[Jesper de Jong]

Deepak Borania wrote:By static I meant , if I could use an enum constant like 'CORRECT' without creating an enum reference like:

Result result = new Result();

The enum constants are static. You can't create instances of an enum outside the enum itself; the line of code above does not compile.

Enums in Java are real, type-safe enums, not half-baked named constants as they are in C or C++.

Aren't plain old classes with nested enum declarations better for the purposes, because having all those constructors etc. in a enum declarations make them seem like classes to me anyway.

You can regard an enum in Java as a special kind of class, but having language support for them is better than having to simulate them with other language features; this makes your code more clear and type-safe.

For more info about enums in Java, see: Enums and Enum Types.

[Deepak Borania]

Thanks man

Will look at the links you gave.should help.These enums in java and importing them are driving me crazy.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Deepak Borania wrote:I always thought, coming from a C/C++ background . . .

It is very easy to think that Java™ is an extension of C/C++. I think the fact that so much Java syntax is copied from C/C++ makes it easier to think that.

But Java is not an extension or a refinement of C/C++. It is a language of its own. Syntactic constructs which look the same might mean something totally different. The French word sympatique, the Italian word simpatico and the German word sympatisch mean more-or-less the same thing (at least, I think they do). But the English word sympathetic means something different. Similarly Java enums are different from C/C++ enums.
Other Java constructs which are different from C/C++ include static and protected.

[Deepak Borania]

Interestingly put.

I haven't reached inheritance as yet, but thanks for the heads-up on protected.

[Nitish Bangera]

Believe me you will love inheritance and other parts of java. I also started with c/c++ but java is in a level of its own. I just love threads and the way threads can be used in java. In c we have to have win32thread.h and then specific functions that are thread specific. Also network programming in java is much more fun than in C or C++.

[Deepak Borania]

yeah !!
Network programming was the actual reason I started learning java.