Enum in Java

Disadvantages of global variable in Java

public static final int SEASON_WINTER = 0;
public static final int SEASON_SPRING = 1;
public static final int SEASON_SUMMER = 2;
public static final int SEASON_FALL   = 3;

This pattern has many problems, such as:

• Not typesafe - Since a season is just an int you can pass in any other int value where a season is required, or add two seasons together (which makes no sense).
• No namespace - You must prefix constants of an int enum with a string (in this case SEASON_) to avoid collisions with other int enum types.
• Brittleness - Because int enums are compile-time constants, they are compiled into clients that use them. If a new constant is added between two existing constants or the order is changed, clients must be recompiled. If they are not, they will still run, but their behavior will be undefined.
• Printed values are uninformative - Because they are just ints, if you print one out all you get is a number, which tells you nothing about what it represents, or even what type it is

Enum

In 5.0, the Java™ programming language gets linguistic support for enumerated types. In their simplest form, these enums look just like their C, C++, and C# counterparts:

enum Season { WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL }

But appearances can be deceiving. Java programming language enums are far more powerful than their counterparts in other languages, which are little more than glorified integers. The new enum declaration defines a full-fledged class (dubbed an enum type). In addition to solving all the problems mentioned above, it allows you to add arbitrary methods and fields to an enum type, to implement arbitrary interfaces, and more. Enum types provide high-quality implementations of all the Object methods. They are Comparable and Serializable, and the serial form is designed to withstand arbitrary changes in the enum type.

public class Card { public enum Rank { DEUCE, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, 
SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, JACK, QUEEN, KING, ACE } 
public enum Suit { CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, SPADES }

    private final Rank rank;
    private final Suit suit;
    private Card(Rank rank, Suit suit) {
        this.rank = rank;
        this.suit = suit;
    }

    public Rank rank() { return rank; }
    public Suit suit() { return suit; }
    public String toString() { return rank + " of " + suit; }

    private static final List<Card> protoDeck = new ArrayList<Card>();

    // Initialize prototype deck
    static {
        for (Suit suit : Suit.values())
            for (Rank rank : Rank.values())
                protoDeck.add(new Card(rank, suit));
    }

    public static ArrayList<Card> newDeck() {
        return new ArrayList<Card>(protoDeck); // Return copy of prototype deck
    }
}

The toString method for Card takes advantage of the toString methods for Rank and Suit. Note that the Card class is short (about 25 lines of code). If the typesafe enums (Rank and Suit) had been built by hand, each of them would have been significantly longer than the entire Card class.

The (private) constructor of Card takes two parameters, a Rank and a Suit. If you accidentally invoke the constructor with the parameters reversed, the compiler will politely inform you of your error. Contrast this to the int enum pattern, in which the program would fail at run time.

Note that each enum type has a static values method that returns an array containing all of the values of the enum type in the order they are declared. This method is commonly used in combination with the for-each loop to iterate over the values of an enumerated type.

The following example is a simple program called Deal that exercises Card. It reads two numbers from the command line, representing the number of hands to deal and the number of cards per hand. Then it creates a new deck of cards, shuffles it, and deals and prints the requested hands.

import java.util.*;

public class Deal {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        int numHands = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
        int cardsPerHand = Integer.parseInt(args[1]);
        List<Card> deck  = Card.newDeck();
        Collections.shuffle(deck);
        for (int i=0; i < numHands; i++)
            System.out.println(deal(deck, cardsPerHand));
    }

    public static ArrayList<Card> deal(List<Card> deck, int n) {
         int deckSize = deck.size();
         List<Card> handView = deck.subList(deckSize-n, deckSize);
         ArrayList<Card> hand = new ArrayList<Card>(handView);
         handView.clear();
         return hand;
     }
}

$ java Deal 4 5
[FOUR of HEARTS, NINE of DIAMONDS, QUEEN of SPADES, ACE of SPADES, NINE of SPADES]
[DEUCE of HEARTS, EIGHT of SPADES, JACK of DIAMONDS, TEN of CLUBS, SEVEN of SPADES]
[FIVE of HEARTS, FOUR of DIAMONDS, SIX of DIAMONDS, NINE of CLUBS, JACK of CLUBS]
[SEVEN of HEARTS, SIX of CLUBS, DEUCE of DIAMONDS, THREE of SPADES, EIGHT of CLUBS]

you want to add data and behavior to an enum. For example consider the planets of the solar system. Each planet knows its mass and radius, and can calculate its surface gravity and the weight of an object on the planet. Here is how it looks:

public enum Planet {
    MERCURY (3.303e+23, 2.4397e6),
    VENUS   (4.869e+24, 6.0518e6),
    EARTH   (5.976e+24, 6.37814e6),
    MARS    (6.421e+23, 3.3972e6),
    JUPITER (1.9e+27,   7.1492e7),
    SATURN  (5.688e+26, 6.0268e7),
    URANUS  (8.686e+25, 2.5559e7),
    NEPTUNE (1.024e+26, 2.4746e7),
    PLUTO   (1.27e+22,  1.137e6);

    private final double mass;   // in kilograms
    private final double radius; // in meters
    Planet(double mass, double radius) {
        this.mass = mass;
        this.radius = radius;
    }
    public double mass()   { return mass; }
    public double radius() { return radius; }

    // universal gravitational constant  (m3 kg-1 s-2)
    public static final double G = 6.67300E-11;

    public double surfaceGravity() {
        return G * mass / (radius * radius);
    }
    public double surfaceWeight(double otherMass) {
        return otherMass * surfaceGravity();
    }
}

The enum type Planet contains a constructor, and each enum constant is declared with parameters to be passed to the constructor when it is created.
Here is a sample program that takes your weight on earth (in any unit) and calculates and prints your weight on all of the planets (in the same unit):

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        double earthWeight = Double.parseDouble(args[0]);
        double mass = earthWeight/EARTH.surfaceGravity();
        for (Planet p : Planet.values())
           System.out.printf("Your weight on %s is %f%n",
                             p, p.surfaceWeight(mass));
    }

$ java Planet 175
Your weight on MERCURY is 66.107583
Your weight on VENUS is 158.374842
Your weight on EARTH is 175.000000
Your weight on MARS is 66.279007
Your weight on JUPITER is 442.847567
Your weight on SATURN is 186.552719
Your weight on URANUS is 158.397260
Your weight on NEPTUNE is 199.207413
Your weight on PLUTO is 11.703031

The idea of adding behavior to enum constants can be taken one step further. You can give each enum constant a different behavior for some method. One way to do this by switching on the enumeration constant. Here is an example with an enum whose constants represent the four basic arithmetic operations, and whose eval method performs the operation:

public enum Operation {
    PLUS, MINUS, TIMES, DIVIDE;

    // Do arithmetic op represented by this constant
    double eval(double x, double y){
        switch(this) {
            case PLUS:   return x + y;
            case MINUS:  return x - y;
            case TIMES:  return x * y;
            case DIVIDE: return x / y;
        }
        throw new AssertionError("Unknown op: " + this);
    }
}

This works fine, but it will not compile without the throw statement, which is not terribly pretty. Worse, you must remember to add a new case to the switch statement each time you add a new constant to Operation. If you forget, the eval method with fail, executing the aforementioned throw statement

There is another way give each enum constant a different behavior for some method that avoids these problems. You can declare the method abstract in the enum type and override it with a concrete method in each constant. Such methods are known asconstant-specific methods. Here is the previous example redone using this technique:

public enum Operation {
  PLUS   { double eval(double x, double y) { return x + y; } },
  MINUS  { double eval(double x, double y) { return x - y; } },
  TIMES  { double eval(double x, double y) { return x * y; } },
  DIVIDE { double eval(double x, double y) { return x / y; } };

  // Do arithmetic op represented by this constant
  abstract double eval(double x, double y);
}