Chapter 05. Storing a value using an enum type

[Dreamoochy]

After applying [System.Flags] to WondersOfTheAncientWorld enum, the class contains two fields of the same type:

public WondersOfTheAncientWorld FavouriteAncientWonder;
public WondersOfTheAncientWorld BucketList;

But FavouriteAncientWonder is designed to hold only one value, whereas with System.Flags it can contain multiple values like BucketList.

I realize this is just a synthetic example, but anyway IMHO each hmm... entity should only be allowed to serve its original purpose to avoid possible bugs and unexpected behaviour.

[markjprice]

I see what you mean. There is nothing to prevent someone from setting the FavoriteAncientWonder to a value that represents multiple wonders. It would be interesting to know how .NET APIs handle this. There are plenty of flags-type enums defined and there must be some scenarios where they must be used singularly. Or maybe not? I suppose if FavoriteAncientWonder was defined as a property then its setter could do some validation. I will do some research. Thanks for raising this interesting issue. :)