differentiating use cases- Enum vs Tuple vs Array
What are some common cases where enums are preferable to use over tuples/arrays, and vice versa?
If that's too expansive a scope of a question, perhaps what are the respective advantages/disadvantages of each?
11 Replies
I'll start off by reading what each type is.
As all 3 do not serve the same purpose at all.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/builtin-types/enum
I'm sure that after reading the doc of each type you'll have a better understanding or a more specific question to follow up with.
Take for example a program where a string cycles between a series of different values (say 9).
I could implement the string values to by cycled through using an array (indices 0-8) and a tuple (explicitly naming the indices), and I don't see why an enum couldn't be used to implement it as well.
What would be the advantage and disadvantage of using a string/ tuple/enum in that scenario?
I legitimately don't understand
Use array when you need to loop thru some values, use enum if you have some options, use tuples when you are too lazy to create a class and need to use the tuple just once
Thanks!! Very succinct
Should also mention that
records exists, which are like tuples but they get compiled into classes/structs.
(string name, int age, Gender gender) -> record Person(string Name, int Age, Gender Gender);Enums are best at representing a small set of closed values: things like directions (up/down/left/right) or days of the week. There's never going to be a new thing in those concepts. The reason why I say this is because adding a new member to an enum usually entails some really boring, error-prone refactoring: they're 'brittle'
(If you want to represent different variations of something more general, polymorphism is probably a better choice)
The reason why you'd use an enum is if you want to make completely sure you've covered every case for a given problem, because the language/your IDE can warn you if you have a switch statement over an enum but forget one of the options.
Definitely avoid ended enums imho like @Becquerel said.
When would you use records over tuples?
When you would normally use a class, but want value-equality semantics and easy immutability
In all seriousness, when having several methods which would return the same tuple type, then having a record with a name is way handier than repeating the same tuple type everywhere.