C# Public Enums in Classes

Question

I have a program with a class that contains a public enum, as follows:

public class Card {     public enum card_suits     {         Clubs,         Hearts,         Spades,         Diamonds     } ... 

I want to use this elsewhere in my project, but can't do that without using Card.card_suit. Does anyone know if there's a way in C# to declare this so that I am able to declare

card_suits suit; 

Without referencing the class that it's in?

Answer 1

Currently, your enum is nested inside of your Card class. All you have to do is move the definition of the enum out of the class:

// A better name which follows conventions instead of card_suits is public enum CardSuit {     Clubs,     Hearts,     Spades,     Diamonds }  public class Card { } 

To Specify:

The name change from card_suits to CardSuit was suggested because Microsoft guidelines suggest Pascal Case for Enumerations and the singular form is more descriptive in this case (as a plural would suggest that you're storing multiple enumeration values by ORing them together).

Answer 2

You need to define the enum outside of the class.

public enum card_suits {     Clubs,     Hearts,     Spades,     Diamonds }  public class Card {      // ... 

That being said, you may also want to consider using the standard naming guidelines for Enums, which would be CardSuit instead of card_suits, since Pascal Casing is suggested, and the enum is not marked with the FlagsAttribute, suggesting multiple values are appropriate in a single variable.