Learning Java by Building Android Games - Second Edition

Enumerations

An enumeration is a list of all the possible values in a logical collection. Java enum is a great way of, well, enumerating things. For example, if our game uses variables which can only be in a specific range of values and if those values could logically form a collection or a set, then enumerations are probably appropriate to use. They will make your code clearer and less error-prone.

To declare an enum in Java we use the keyword, enum, followed by the name of the enumeration, followed by the values the enumeration can have, enclosed in a pair of curly braces {...}.

As an example, examine this enumeration declaration. Note that it is a convention to declare the values from the enumeration in all uppercase.

private enum zombieTypes ...