Enum to String?

Question

I've got an enum defined like this

enum Tile { Empty, White, Black }; 

But let's suppose when written to the console,

Console.Write(Tile.White); 

I want it to print

W 

Or any other value, I could use a switch for this, but is there a nicer way? Perhaps using attributes?

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Here's what I have in mind. Writing something like this,

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Field)] public class ReprAttribute : Attribute {     public string Representation;     public ReprAttribute(string representation)     {         this.Representation = representation;     }     public override string ToString()     {         return this.Representation;     } }  enum Tile {      [Repr(".")]     Empty,      [Repr("W")]     White,      [Repr("B")]     Black  };  // ... Console.Write(Tile.Empty) 

Would print

. 

Of course, that override string ToString() didn't do what I was hoping it would do (it still outputs "Empty" instead.

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This article summarizes it pretty well: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/abhinaba/archive/2005/10/20/c-enum-and-overriding-tostring-on-it.aspx

Answer 1

You could use attributes :

using System.ComponentModel;  public enum Tile {     [Description("E")]     Empty,      [Description("W")]     White,      [Description("B")]     Black } 

And an helper method :

public static class ReflectionHelpers {     public static string GetCustomDescription(object objEnum)     {         var fi = objEnum.GetType().GetField(objEnum.ToString());         var attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);         return (attributes.Length > 0) ? attributes[0].Description : objEnum.ToString();     }      public static string Description(this Enum value)     {         return GetCustomDescription(value);     } } 

Usage :

Console.Write(Tile.Description());