Base enum class inheritance

Question

#include <iostream>
#include <ostream>

class Enum
{
public:
    enum
    {
        One = 1,
        Two,
        Last
    };
};

class EnumDeriv : public Enum
{
public:
    enum
    {
        Three = Enum::Last,
        Four,
        Five
    };
};

int main()
{
    std::cout << EnumDeriv::One << std::endl;
    std::cout << EnumDeriv::Four << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Not possible. There is no inheritance with enums.

You can instead use classes with named const ints.

Example:

class Colors
{
public:
  static const int RED = 1;
  static const int GREEN = 2;
};

class RGB : public Colors
{
  static const int BLUE = 10;
};


class FourColors : public Colors
{
public:
  static const int ORANGE = 100;
  static const int PURPLE = 101;
};

You can't do that directly, but you could try to use solution from this article.

The main idea is to use the helper template class which holds enum values and has the type cast operator. Considering that the underlying type for enum is int you can use this holder class seamlessly in your code instead of the enum.

Unfortunately it is not possible in C++14. I hope we will have such a language feature in C++17. As you already got few workarounds for your problem I won't provide a solution.

I would like to point out that the wording should be "extension" not "inheritance". The extension allows for more values (as you're jumping from 3 to 6 values in your example) whereas inheritance means putting more constraints to a given base class so the set of possibilities shrinks. Therefore, potential casting would work exactly opposite from inheritance. You can cast derived class to the base class and not vice-verse with class inheritance. But when having extensions you "should" be able to cast the base class to its extension and not vice-verse. I am saying "should" because, as I said such a language feature still doesn't exist.

How about this? Ok an instance is created for every possible value, but besides that its very flexible. Are there any downsides?

.h:

class BaseEnum
{
public:
  static const BaseEnum ONE;
  static const BaseEnum TWO;

  bool operator==(const BaseEnum& other);

protected:
  BaseEnum() : i(maxI++) {}
  const int i;
  static int maxI;
};

class DerivedEnum : public BaseEnum
{
public:
  static const DerivedEnum THREE;
};

.cpp:

int BaseEnum::maxI = 0;

bool BaseEnum::operator==(const BaseEnum& other) {
  return i == other.i;
}

const BaseEnum BaseEnum::ONE;
const BaseEnum BaseEnum::TWO;
const DerivedEnum DerivedEnum::THREE;

Usage:

BaseEnum e = DerivedEnum::THREE;

if (e == DerivedEnum::THREE) {
    std::cerr << "equal" << std::endl;
}