How to define an enumerated type (enum) in C?
It's worth pointing out that you don't need a typedef
. You can just do it like the following
enum strategy { RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH };
enum strategy my_strategy = IMMEDIATE;
It's a style question whether you prefer typedef
. Without it, if you want to refer to the enumeration type, you need to use enum strategy
. With it, you can just say strategy
.
Both ways have their pro and cons. The one is more wordy, but keeps type identifiers into the tag-namespace where they won't conflict with ordinary identifiers (think of struct stat
and the stat
function: these don't conflict either), and where you immediately see that it's a type. The other is shorter, but brings type identifiers into the ordinary namespace.
Declaring an enum variable is done like this:
enum strategy {RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH};
enum strategy my_strategy = IMMEDIATE;
However, you can use a typedef
to shorten the variable declarations, like so:
typedef enum {RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH} strategy;
strategy my_strategy = IMMEDIATE;
Having a naming convention to distinguish between types and variables is a good idea:
typedef enum {RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH} strategy_type;
strategy_type my_strategy = IMMEDIATE;
You're trying to declare strategy
twice, and that's why you're getting the above error. The following works without any complaints (compiled with gcc -ansi -pedantic -Wall
):
#include <stdio.h>
enum { RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH } strategy = IMMEDIATE;
int main(int argc, char** argv){
printf("strategy: %d\n", strategy);
return 0;
}
If instead of the above, the second line were changed to:
...
enum { RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH } strategy;
strategy = IMMEDIATE;
...
From the warnings, you could easily see your mistake:
enums.c:5:1: warning: data definition has no type or storage class [enabled by default]
enums.c:5:1: warning: type defaults to ‘int’ in declaration of ‘strategy’ [-Wimplicit-int]
enums.c:5:1: error: conflicting types for ‘strategy’
enums.c:4:36: note: previous declaration of ‘strategy’ was here
So the compiler took strategy = IMMEDIATE
for a declaration of a variable called strategy
with default type int
, but there was already a previous declaration of a variable with this name.
However, if you placed the assignment in the main()
function, it would be a valid code:
#include <stdio.h>
enum { RANDOM, IMMEDIATE, SEARCH } strategy = IMMEDIATE;
int main(int argc, char** argv){
strategy=SEARCH;
printf("strategy: %d\n", strategy);
return 0;
}