Databases
StackOverflow2013
Postsdbo
POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
 

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals
  1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
    primarykey
    data
    text
    <p>I was looking for a way to enumerate String types in (vb).NET, but .NET enums only accept numeric type values.</p> <p>The first alternative I came across was to create a dictionary of my enum values and the string I want to return. This worked, but was hard to maintain because if you changed the enum you would have to remember to also change the dictionary.</p> <p>The second alternative was to set field attributes on each enum member, and retrieve it using reflection. Surely enough this worked aswell and also solved the maintenance problem, but it uses reflection and I've always read that using reflection should be a last resort thing.</p> <p>So I started thinking and I came up with this: every ASCII character can be represented as a hexadecimal value, and you can assign hexadecimal values to enum members. You could get rid of the attributes, assign the hexadecimal values to the enum members. Then, when you need the text value, convert the value to a byte array and use <code>System.Text.Encodings.ASCII.GetString(enumMemberBytes)</code> to get the string value.</p> <p>Now speaking out of experience, anything I come up with is usually either flawed or just plain wrong. What do you guys think about this approach? Is there any reason not to do it like that?</p> <p>Thanks.</p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>As pointed out by David W, enum member values are limited in length, depending on the underlying type (integer by default). So yes, I believe my method works but you are limited to characters in the <a href="http://www.asciitable.com/" rel="nofollow">ASCII table</a>, with a maximum length of 4 or 8 characters using integers or longs respectively.</p>
    singulars
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PTQuestion
    1. USSteven Liekens
    1. USSteven Liekens
    plurals
    1. PL
      singulars
      1. LTLinked
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    1. VO
      singulars
      1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
      1. USKhan
      1. VTFavorite
    2. VO
      singulars
      1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    1. COPerhaps I'm not understanding your question properly, but the enumeration type just implies an int type. In your scenario, assuming a four-byte length for an int (as on a 32-bit platform), you'd be constrained to four-character (ASCII-encoded) enumeration "strings." Now, having said that, keep in mind that you can declare textual (symbolic) names in your enum values that can, in turn, be readily converted to Strings when you need them.
      singulars
      1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
      1. USDavid W
    2. COAhh I just ran into that problem. Changing the underlying type to Long doubles the maximum length to 8 characters, but that's still not enough for what I'm trying to do.
      singulars
      1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
      1. USSteven Liekens
    3. COare you trying How to enumerate an enum? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/105372/how-to-enumerate-an-enum
      singulars
      1. POEnumerating Strings as bytes?
      1. USvolody
 

Querying!

 
Guidance
A row detail

Detail views are divided into sections. All the information in the data section comes from columns in the selected row. The other sections display data from other, related rows.

Related data can be related in a to-one or a to-many fashion. Captions of data related in a to-many fashion link to a list view showing a filtered view of the table.

Try moving around until you find a non-empty to-many entry and click on the label to get to one. You can move back to the root by clicking on the database name in the header.

SQuiL has stopped working due to an internal error.

If you are curious you may find further information in the browser console, which is accessible through the devtools (F12).

Reload