Java enum elements with spaces?

Question

Im working on java, I have created an enum as follows:

public enum myEnum
{
    india,
    russian,
    england,
    north America
}

Above

Answer 1

You can't put a space in the middle of an identifier.

Doing so ends that identifier and the parser assumes whatever comes next is a valid token in that statement's context. There are few (if any) places that would be legal.

Conventional Java value names would be:

INDIA,         // Or  India,
RUSSIA,        //     Russia,
NORTH_AMERICA; //     NorthAmerica;

An enum can have associated properties, like human-readable names, e.g.,

public enum CountryAndOneContinent {

    INDIA("India"),
    RUSSIA("Russia"),
    NORTH_AMERICA("North America");

    private String displayName;

    CountryAndOneContinent(String displayName) {
        this.displayName = displayName;
    }

    public String displayName() { return displayName; }

    // Optionally and/or additionally, toString.
    @Override public String toString() { return displayName; }
}

---

I'm ambivalent about using toString to provide presentation-layer representations.

I prefer methods communicate their purpose explicitly–it's more expressive and obvious.

toString is pretty generic, and allows only a single representation. Multiple output formats may be required depending on context, parameters, etc. which toString doesn't allow.

Advantages of toString include using default string operations on the object, and in this case, using valueOf to directly translate from the human-readable version to the enum value.

Answer 2

I'm gong to go ahead and guess why you want a space in the name; because you want to reference it as a string.

So do this:

public enum MyEnum {
    INDIA("India"),
    RUSSIAN("Russian"),
    ENGLAND("England"),
    NORTH_AMERICA("North America");    

    private String name;

    MyEnum(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return this.name;
    }    
}

You can consider overriding string.

public toString() {
    return name;
}

An advantage of overriding toString() is that this string can also be used in MyEnum .valueOf(myString). So overriding toString basically creates a HashMap of the enum values.