A simple coding blog for new graduates

Recently, I discovered the usefulness of the enum type in C++. I can’t believe how long I’ve gone without using an enum because I didn’t know why I should use it over a #define. The two main reasons to use enums over #define is 1) sequential self-numbering and 2) enums allow the value to be visible to the debugger. This post is about the first reason.

Let’s say we want a list of variables, and the variables need to be assigned a unique number for processing, but we don’t care what number is assigned to it. Enumeration to the rescue! Define an enum with a list of variables and it will assign each variable an integer value starting from zero. For example:

enum
{
    alpha,
    beta,
    delta,
    gamma
};

// The values stored in the enum variables are:
// alpha == 0
// beta == 1
// delta == 2
// gamma == 3

Now you can add another variable to the the list in any position (because remember we don’t care what number is assigned to it, it just has to be a unique number) and you won’t have to renumber the other values. It just does it automatically!

enum
{
    alpha,
    beta,
    omega, //<---------
    delta,
    gamma
};

// The values stored in the enum variables are:
// alpha == 0
// beta == 1
// omega == 2
// delta == 3
// gamma == 4

You’re probably thinking: “Great, it self-numbers. What’s the point?” Well the point is that you can use this as array indices and declarations. Assume you have some boolean option settings for your program with the following options: isFullScreen, isWidescreen, isMoving.

Let’s start out making a new file called “options.h” with the following code:

namespace options
{
    enum
    {
        isFullScreen,
        isWidescreen,
        isMoving,
        size
    };
}

I put the enum inside a namespace so that I can use the enum in multiple places without creating an instance of an object. The namespace also allows Visual Studio to list all the enum variables in the autocomplete dialog when using the scope operator ("::"). All I need to do is add #include "options.h" to the top of the header files where I want to use this enum. The last variable size is always going to be the size of the array. Now, remember an enum variable is a const integer value which is why we can use it as an array index value. To use this enum in a class I would use the following code snippet:

// include the namespace file
#include "options.h"

// declares the array, but does not initialize the elements
bool myOptions[options::size];

// then I can initialize the values like so:
myOptions[options::isFullScreen] = false;
myOptions[options::isWidescreen] = false;
myOptions[options::isMoving] = false;

...

// usage example
if(myOptions[options::isFullScreen])
{
    // do something
}

That’s fine and dandy, but if we add another option, we would have to add another line to set that option to false on initialization. We’re lazy and are willing to write more code now to prevent having to write more code in the future so let’s add a reset function to the options namespace.

namespace options
{
    enum
    {
        isFullScreen,
        isWidescreen,
        isMoving,
        size
    };

    static void Reset(bool myArray[options::size], bool value);
}

// the following lines of code are in the same file as the namespace
/**
@brief Resets all the options to a specific value
@param myArray  The array of options using the namespace's enum
@param value    The value to assign to all the options
*/
void options::Reset(bool myArray[options::size], bool value)
{
    for(int i=0; i<options::size; i++)
    {
        myArray[i] = value;
    }
}

I put a value as a parameter because I want the flexibility to set all the options to true or false. The static keyword allows us to use the function without declaring an object so we just reference the function like so in the class:

// declares the array, but does not initialize the elements
bool myOptions[options::size];

// resets all the options
options::Reset(myOptions, false);

...

// usage example
if(myOptions[options::isFullScreen])
{
    // do something
}

Now let’s add another option to the enum to detect if a file is loaded:

namespace options
{
    enum
    {
        isLoaded, //<-----------
        isFullScreen,
        isWidescreen,
        isMoving,
        size
    };

    static void Reset(bool myArray[options::size], bool value);
}

The beauty of this is I can add this function without having to renumber or edit the existing code! I just add the new option where I need to use it.

// still works correctly
if(myOptions[options::isFullScreen])
{
    // do something
}

// do this for the new option
if(myOptions[options::isLoaded])
{
    // do something
}

This is not the only example for using enums with arrays. There are so many possibilities such as having an array of strings and looping through it to read the values. Learning how to use enums for arrays changed my life. It has made me more productive and made maintenance so much easier. It’s such an elegant, cheap, and easy way to improve the code tenfold.