Should “or” work with .Net4 Hasflags: enum.HasFlag(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write)

Question

I am trying out the new HasFlags features, and was wondering if the following should work:

enum.HasFlag(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write)

... because it doesn't seem to...

 DBAccessRights rights = (DBAccessRights)permission.PermissionFlags;
  if (rights.HasFlag(DBAccessRights.WikiMode))
  {
     // works
  }


  if (rights.HasFlag(DBAccessRights.WikiMode | DBAccessRights.CreateNew))
  {
     // Doesn't work    
  }

  DBAccessRights flags = DBAccessRights.WikiMode | DBAccessRights.CreateNew;
  if (rights.HasFlag(flags))
  {
     // Doesn't work
  }

Answer 1

Given the documentation, I'd expect that to return true if the value has both of those flags.

If you want it to test whether your value has either of those flags, you'll need

value.HasFlag(AccessRights.Read) | value.HasFlag(AccessRights.Write)

If that's not good readable enough for you, you may want to look at my Unconstrained Melody project. It so happens that that already has the functionality you want (as extension methods in Flags.cs):

// Same as value.HasFlag(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write)
value.HasAll(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write)

// Same as value.HasFlag(AccessRights.Read) | value.HasFlag(AccessRights.Write)
value.HasAny(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write)

Those would make it clearer, IMO. They'd also avoid boxing, and be typesafe :)

Answer 2

From MSDN:

The HasFlag method returns the result of the following Boolean expression.

thisInstance And flag = flag

For a complex flag such as AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write, this will check that all the "contained" flags are present.

You probably want to check that any of the flags are present, in which case you can do:

myAccessRights & (AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write) != 0 

Answer 3

The | operator is bitwise or. It means that if Read is 1 and Write is 2, the value Read | Write is 3 (see its binary representation). So HasFlag returns true only if your enum variable have both Read and Write set.

Answer 4

Alternatively, you could just reverse the order of the expression:

//returns true - a bit easier on the eye
(AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write).HasFlag(myAccessRights)

This will return true if you have either Read | Write access. That would be functionally equivalent to:

//also returns true - as per @Ani's answer
myAccessRights & (AccessRights.Read | AccessRights.Write) != 0

EDIT

As pointed out in the comments, The first expression will return true if myAccessRights is empty, and false if myAccessRights has more than just Read and Write.