Enum

giving meaningful names to not-meaningful numbers

Enumeration

Enumeration (aka Enum): User-defined data type for assigning names to constants, so the code becomes more legible.

We will use UPPER_SNAKE_CASE most of the time for enums.

enum week {
    SUNDAY, 
    MONDAY, 
    TUESDAY, 
    WEDNESDAY, 
    THURSDAY, 
    FRIDAY, 
    SATURDAY
};
/**
 * SUNDAY corresponds to 0
 * MONDAY corresponds to 1
 * ...
 * SATURDAY corresponds to 6
 * /

Sample Code

#include <stdio.h> 

enum week {
    SUNDAY, 
    MONDAY = 0, 
    TUESDAY = 3
};
  
int main() { 
   printf("%d, %d, %d\n", sunday, monday, tuesday); 
   return 0; 
}

Output:

0, 0, 3

You can also declare enum variables.

// creating an enum variable called `day` of type `week`

enum week {
    SUNDAY, 
    MONDAY, 
    TUESDAY
} day;

/*--- OR ---*/

enum week {
    SUNDAY, 
    MONDAY, 
    TUESDAY
};
enum week day;

Sample Code

#include <stdio.h> 
  
enum week {
    SUNDAY, 
    MONDAY = 3, 
    TUESDAY
}; 
  
int main() { 
    enum week day; 
    day = tuesday; 
    printf("%d\n", day); 
    return 0;
}

Output:

4

Enums are useful when we want to define multiple variables which can be grouped together.