Re: Is there a limit to the number of "things" in an enum

From:

Lew <lew@nospam.lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.help

Date:

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:56:31 -0400

Message-ID:

<nN-dnUAwbYJCpGHYnZ2dnUVZ_qXinZ2d@comcast.com>

printdude1...@gmail.com wrote:

Apparently, enumeration is overrated. Using a class instead of an
enumeration seems to be a better choice, according to one of the books
I am reading....
Cunucks unite... :-)

Casper <cas...@jbr.dk> wrote:

And which book might that be? I find enumerations to be quite a natural
idiom to a language, Sun should have included it 10 years ago. You can
switch on them for instance which would not be possile using class
pseudo-enum pattern. (It would be possible using int pseudo-enum pattern
but this is inherently type unsafe).

printdude1968@gmail.com wrote:

Effective Java - Chapter 5 Item 21: Replace enum constructs with
classes

You have misconstrued this advice. In the first place, Mr. Bloch was talking
about "enum constructs" such as "private static int LOGOFF = 0;", not the enum
keyword, since it was written before the introduction of that keyword. In the
second place, if you read through that chapter you will see that he advocates
doing exactly what the "enum" keyword does for the same reasons that keyword
exists. In other words, his advice since Java 1.5 translates to "Replace enum
constructs with the enum keyword."

-- Lew