Can I set enum start value in Java?

Question

Java enums are not like C or C++ enums, which are really just labels for integers.

Java enums are implemented more like classes - and they can even have multiple attributes.

public enum Ids {
    OPEN(100), CLOSE(200);

    private final int id;
    Ids(int id) { this.id = id; }
    public int getValue() { return id; }
}

The big difference is that they are type-safe which means you don't have to worry about assigning a COLOR enum to a SIZE variable.

See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/enum.html for more.

Yes. You can pass the numerical values to the constructor for the enum, like so:

enum Ids {
  OPEN(100),
  CLOSE(200);

  private int value;    

  private Ids(int value) {
    this.value = value;
  }

  public int getValue() {
    return value;
  }
}

See the Sun Java Language Guide for more information.

whats about using this way:

public enum HL_COLORS{
          YELLOW,
          ORANGE;

          public int getColorValue() {
              switch (this) {
            case YELLOW:
                return 0xffffff00;
            case ORANGE:
                return 0xffffa500;    
            default://YELLOW
                return 0xffffff00;
            }
          }
}

there is only one method ..

you can use static method and pass the Enum as parameter like:

public enum HL_COLORS{
          YELLOW,
          ORANGE;

          public static int getColorValue(HL_COLORS hl) {
              switch (hl) {
            case YELLOW:
                return 0xffffff00;
            case ORANGE:
                return 0xffffa500;    
            default://YELLOW
                return 0xffffff00;
            }
          }

Note that these two ways use less memory and more process units .. I don't say this is the best way but its just another approach.

If you use very big enum types then, following can be useful;

public enum deneme {

    UPDATE, UPDATE_FAILED;

    private static Map<Integer, deneme> ss = new TreeMap<Integer,deneme>();
    private static final int START_VALUE = 100;
    private int value;

    static {
        for(int i=0;i<values().length;i++)
        {
            values()[i].value = START_VALUE + i;
            ss.put(values()[i].value, values()[i]);
        }
    }

    public static deneme fromInt(int i) {
        return ss.get(i);
    }

    public int value() {
    return value;
    }
}

If you want emulate enum of C/C++ (base num and nexts incrementals):

enum ids {
    OPEN, CLOSE;
    //
    private static final int BASE_ORDINAL = 100;
    public int getCode() {
        return ordinal() + BASE_ORDINAL;
    }
};

public class TestEnum {
    public static void main (String... args){
        for (ids i : new ids[] { ids.OPEN, ids.CLOSE }) {
            System.out.println(i.toString() + " " + 
                i.ordinal() + " " + 
                i.getCode());
        }
    }
}

OPEN 0 100
CLOSE 1 101

The ordinal() function returns the relative position of the identifier in the enum. You can use this to obtain automatic indexing with an offset, as with a C-style enum.

Example:

public class TestEnum {
    enum ids {
        OPEN,
        CLOSE,
        OTHER;

        public final int value = 100 + ordinal();
    };

    public static void main(String arg[]) {
        System.out.println("OPEN:  " + ids.OPEN.value);
        System.out.println("CLOSE: " + ids.CLOSE.value);
        System.out.println("OTHER: " + ids.OTHER.value);
    }
};

Gives the output:

OPEN:  100
CLOSE: 101
OTHER: 102

Edit: just realized this is very similar to ggrandes' answer, but I will leave it here because it is very clean and about as close as you can get to a C style enum.