How to deal with multiple enumeration types in one variable

Question

I don't know if this is possible or not, but I'm writing a simple game using XNA and C#, and somehow need one particular variable to be able to handle more than one enumeration type. The character you control has a single inventory slot, which can be one of the fruit types below:

public enum Fruit : int {Apple, Banana, Orange};
public Fruit carrying;

But the character can also be able to carry something else:

public enum Misc : int {Parcel, Brush};

I don't want to merge them all into one enum because I want the Fruit enumeration to be distinct, and I don't want to have to have two different 'carrying' variables - one for Fruit and one for Misc.

Is there any way of having, say, a super-enumeration, that can merge them together into a third enumeration of all five members?

EDIT: thanks for the responses. I have decided to create a single Item type (a member of which is an enumeration that differentiates between Fruit and Misc) and load them into a List via XML.

Answer 1

It sounds like you probably want a union type for CarriableItem or something similar. For example:

public sealed class CarriableItem
{
    public Fruit? Fruit { get; private set; }
    public Misc? Misc { get; private set; }

    // Only instantiated through factory methods
    private CarriableItem() {}

    public static CarriableItem FromFruit(Fruit fruit)
    {
        return new CarriableItem { Fruit = fruit };
    }

    public static CarriableItem FromMisc(Misc misc)
    {
        return new CarriableItem { Misc = misc };
    }
}

You might also then want another enum to indicate which kind of item is being carried:

public enum CarriableItemType
{
    Fruit,
    Misc
}

Then add a property to CarriableItem:

public CarriableItemType { get; private set; }

and set it in the factory methods appropriately.

Then your person would have just a single variable of type CarriableItem.