What does the [Flags] Enum Attribute mean in C#?

Question

From time to time I see an enum like the following:

[Flags]
public enum Options 
{
    None    = 0,
    Option1 = 1,
    Option2 = 2,
    Option3 = 4,
    Op         


        

Answer 1

There's something overly verbose to me about the if ((x & y) == y)... construct, especially if x AND y are both compound sets of flags and you only want to know if there's any overlap.

In this case, all you really need to know is if there's a non-zero value[1] after you've bitmasked.

[1] See Jaime's comment. If we were authentically bitmasking, we'd only need to check that the result was positive. But since enums can be negative, even, strangely, when combined with the [Flags] attribute, it's defensive to code for != 0 rather than > 0.

Building off of @andnil's setup...

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace BitFlagPlay
{
    class Program
    {
        [Flags]
        public enum MyColor
        {
            Yellow = 0x01,
            Green = 0x02,
            Red = 0x04,
            Blue = 0x08
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var myColor = MyColor.Yellow | MyColor.Blue;
            var acceptableColors = MyColor.Yellow | MyColor.Red;

            Console.WriteLine((myColor & MyColor.Blue) != 0);     // True
            Console.WriteLine((myColor & MyColor.Red) != 0);      // False                
            Console.WriteLine((myColor & acceptableColors) != 0); // True
            // ... though only Yellow is shared.

            Console.WriteLine((myColor & MyColor.Green) != 0);    // Wait a minute... ;^D

            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}