Enumerated Data Type

Enumeration (or enum) is a user defined data type in C. It is mainly used to assign names to integral constants, the names make a program easy to read and maintain.The symbolically declared members are integer constants. The keyword enum is used to declare an enumeration type. The general construct used to declare an enumeration type is

enum tag_name {member1, member2, member3,..,member} variable1, variable2,..,variable n

In this declaration, either tag_name or variable may be omitted or both may be present. But at least one of them must exist in this declaration construct.

The members are integer constants. By default the first member member1 assigned value 0 member2 assigned value 1 and so on.

Eg:

enum week{Mon, Tue, Wed,Thu,Fri,Sat};

enum week day;

// Or

enum week{Mon, Tue, Wed,Thu,Fri,Sat}day;

#include <stdio.h>
enum day {sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday};
int main()
{
enum day d = thursday;
printf("The day number stored in d is %d", d);
return 0;
}

We can explicitly assign values also.Two enum names can have same value. For example, in the following C program both ‘Failed’ and ‘Freezed’ have same value 0.

#include <stdio.h> enum State {Working = 1, Failed = 0, Freezed = 0};  int main() {    printf("%d, %d, %d", Working, Failed, Freezed);    return 0; }

Output:

1, 0, 0

If we do not explicitly assign values to enum names, the compiler by default assigns values starting from 0. For example, in the following C program, sunday gets value 0, monday gets 1, and so on.

#include <stdio.h> enum day {sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday};  int main() {     enum day d = thursday;     printf("The day number stored in d is %d", d);     return 0; }

Output:

The day number stored in d is 4

We can assign values to some name in any order. All unassigned names get value as value of previous name plus one.

#include <stdio.h> enum day {sunday = 1, monday, tuesday = 5, wednesday, thursday = 10, friday, saturday};  int main() {     printf("%d %d %d %d %d %d %d", sunday, monday, tuesday,             wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday);     return 0; }

Output:

1 2 5 6 10 11 12

The value assigned to enum names must be some integeral constant, i.e., the value must be in range from minimum possible integer value to maximum possible integer value.

All enum constants must be unique in their scope. For example, the following declaration fails in compilation.

enum state  {working, failed}; enum result {failed, passed};

Enum vs Macro
We can also use macros to define names constants. For example we can define ‘Working’ and ‘Failed’ using following macro.

#define Working 0 #define Failed 1 #define Freezed 2

There are multiple advantages of using enum over macro when many related named constants have integral values.
a) Enums follow scope rules.
b) Enum variables are automatically assigned values. Following is simpler

enum state  {Working, Failed, Freezed};