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Olivier Pons
Olivier Pons

Reputation: 15778

How to make a const array of string with enum as keys?

Here's what I'd like to do in CSharp but I dont know how to do this (I know this is not valid C#):

const enum GameOver { Winner, Looser, Tied, };
GameOvers = [
    GameOver.Winner: "Person is the winner",
    GameOver.Looser: "Person is the looser",
    GameOver.Tied: "Game is tied",
]

And later on, I want to be able to call it like:

Display(GameOvers[GameOver.Winner])

(I want to handle a const array of errors like this actually).

How would you do in C#?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1985

Answers (2)

Tommaso Belluzzo
Tommaso Belluzzo

Reputation: 23675

public static readonly String[] Messages =
{
    "Person is the winner",
    "Person is the looser",
    "Game is tied"
};

public enum GameOver
{
    Winner = 0,
    Looser = 1,
    Tied = 2
}

Display(Messages[(Int32)GameOver.Winner]);

Maybe less compact, but functional. Your strings will also be insured to be immutable thanks to the readonly attribute (What are the benefits to marking a field as `readonly` in C#?).

Upvotes: 0

adjan
adjan

Reputation: 13652

The closest approach that comes into my mind is using a Dictionary<GameOver, string>:

enum GameOver { Winner, Loser, Tied };

Dictionary<GameOver, string> GameOvers =  new Dictionary<GameOver, string>()
{
    {GameOver.Winner, "Person is the winner"}, 
    {GameOver.Loser,  "Person is the loser"},
    {GameOver.Tied,   "Game is tied"}
};

But notice, that you can't make the Dictionary really constant, since the instance is mutable.

Upvotes: 1

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