why can not do this casting

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2.00/5 (1 vote)

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C#

enum Gender
{
    male, female
}
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Gender M = Gender.male;
        M = 0;
        //
        Gender F = Gender.female;
        F = 1; // this wrong statement , must be implicitly cast


    }
}

why we can just do implicitly cast for (zero), and another value must be explicit casting ??

Posted 30-Jan-13 4:00am

Anderso0on

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Anderso0on 30-Jan-13 10:05am

this is wrong statment
// this wrong statement , must be implicitly ((i mean explicitly not implicitly ))cast

CHill60 30-Jan-13 10:12am

You can use the "Improve question" link to make the change in your original post if you like

CHill60 30-Jan-13 10:13am

Have a look at these links to see if it helps explain it...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1260859/confusion-with-c-sharp-enum-and-explicit-conversion
and especially
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4728295/why-enums-require-an-explicit-cast-to-int-type
They explain it far better than I can!

Anderso0on 30-Jan-13 10:27am

thanks but this link can not explain my qus :(

boogac 30-Jan-13 10:38am

cHill60's second link has a good answer..Philip Rieck commented that "enums do not have to be int based"

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OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2013-01-30T04:35:00

Because the default value for any value type is zero - and an enum is a value type.
So you can always assign a zero to it (or it couldn't have a default value, which would be silly) but you can't assign any other integer value to it without casting it to an enum (to be sure you meant to do that, as it could generate values which are not part of the enumeration, particularly when you don't specify enum values, as you don't)