Enum to String?

The naive non-attribute way:

public enum Tile {
    White = 'W',
    Black = 'B'
} 
//...
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} - {1}", Tile.White.ToString(), (char)Tile.White));
//Prints out:
//White - W

You could use attributes :

using System.ComponentModel;

public enum Tile
{
    [Description("E")]
    Empty,

    [Description("W")]
    White,

    [Description("B")]
    Black
}

And an helper method :

public static class ReflectionHelpers
{
    public static string GetCustomDescription(object objEnum)
    {
        var fi = objEnum.GetType().GetField(objEnum.ToString());
        var attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
        return (attributes.Length > 0) ? attributes[0].Description : objEnum.ToString();
    }

    public static string Description(this Enum value)
    {
        return GetCustomDescription(value);
    }
}

Usage :

Console.Write(Tile.Description());

You can use the ToString() method:

Tile t = Tile.White;
Console.WriteLine(t.ToString()); // prints "White"
Console.WriteLine(t.ToString().SubString(0, 1)); // prints "W"