How to use enums in C++

Question

Suppose we have an enum like the following:

enum Days {Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday};

I want to crea

Answer 1

This should not work in C++:

Days.Saturday

Days is not a scope or object that contains members you can access with the dot operator. This syntax is just a C#-ism and is not legal in C++.

Microsoft has long maintained a C++ extension that allows you to access the identifiers using the scope operator:

enum E { A, B, C };

A;
E::B; // works with Microsoft's extension

But this is non-standard before C++11. In C++03 the identifiers declared in an enum exist only in the same scope as the enum type itself.

A;
E::B; // error in C++03

C++11 makes it legal to qualify enum identifiers with the enum name, and also introduces enum classes, which create a new scope for the identifiers instead of placing them in the surrounding scope.

A;
E::B; // legal in C++11

enum class F { A, B, C };

A; // error
F::B;

Answer 2

You can use a trick to use scopes as you wish, just declare enum in such way:

struct Days 
{
   enum type
   {
      Saturday,Sunday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday
   };
};

Days::type day = Days::Saturday;
if (day == Days::Saturday)