Two enums have some elements in common, why does this produce an error?

Question

I have two enums in my code:

enum Month {January, February, March, April, May, June, July,
        August, September, October, November, December};
enum Shor         


        

Answer 1

In C++11 you can use scoped enumerations to fix this this. This will remove the names from the global scope and scope them to the enum name.

enum class Identity
{
       UNKNOWN = 1,
       CHECKED = 2,
       UNCHECKED =3
};

enum class Status
{
       UNKNOWN = 0,
       PENDING = 1,
       APPROVED = 2,
       UNAPPROVED =3
};

int main ()
{
    Identity::UNKNOWN;
    Status::UNKNOW;
}

Live Example

Answer 2

I suggest you merge the two:

enum Month {
  Jan, January=Jan, Feb, February=Feb, Mar, March=Mar, 
  Apr, April=Apr,   May,               Jun, June=Jun, 
  Jul, July=Jul,    Aug, August=Aug,   Sep, September=Sep, 
  Oct, October=Oct, Nov, November=Nov, Dec, December=Dec};

Which will have exactly the same effect, and is more convenient.

If you want January to have the value 1, instead of 0, add this:

enum Month {
  Jan=1, January=Jan, Feb, February=Feb, ....

Answer 3

In C++, to avoid name clashing you could wrap your enums into structs:

struct Month { enum {January, February, March, April, May, June, July,
        August, September, October, November, December}; };
struct ShortMonth { enum {Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec}; };

Answer 4

Enum names are in global scope, they need to be unique. Remember that you don't need to qualify the enum symbols with the enum name, you do just:

Month xmas = December;

not:

Month xmas = Month.December;  /* This is not C. */

For this reason, you often see people prefixing the symbol names with the enum's name:

enum Month { Month_January, Month_February, /* and so on */ };

Answer 5

In C enums are used without any type prefix, so you write:

month[0] = January;  
month[4] = May;

The enum Month and ShortMonth have the same scope so the compiler can't know which May to use. An obvious fix would be to prefix the enums but i'm not sure that your use of these enums in this case is warranted.

Answer 6

My suggestion here is to have just one enum, as they are the same type. If you want short aliases to type less in your code (even if I wouldn't advise you to do so), you can do:

enum Month {
 January, Jan = January,
 February, Feb = February,
 March, Mar = March,
 April, Apr = April
 May,
 June, Jun = June,
 July, Jul = July,
 ...};

And to have different presentation names (short and long), you should have two distinct string arrays that are indexed by the enum.

char[MAX_MONTH_NAME_LENGTH][12] month_long_names = {
  "January", "February", ...
}

char[3][12] short_long_names = {
  "Jan", "Feb", ...
}

printf("month %d long name is %s, and short name is %s\n", May, long_month_names[May], short_month_names[May]);