converting from int to enum

Question

I have declared the following enum :

  enum periods {one, five, ten, fifteen, thirty};

and now I want to pass it as a commandline argument

Answer 1

At a random guess, what you really want is something more like:

periods mp;
if (argc < 2) {
    mp=one; // default value
} else if (strcmp(argv[1], "one")==0) {
    mp=one;
} else if (strcmp(argv[1], "five")==0) {
    mp=five;
} else if (strcmp(argv[1], "ten")==0) {
    mp=ten;
} else if (strcmp(argv[1], "fifteen")==0) {
    mp=fifteen;
} else if (strcmp(argv[1], "thirty")==0) {
    mp=thirty;
} else {
    fprintf(stderr, "I can't possibly comprehend periods = '%s'\n", argv[1]);
    return -1;
}