Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Enumerated Constants

Enumerated constants create a set of constants. For example, you can declare COLOR to be an enumeration; and you can define that there are five values for COLOR: RED, BLUE, GREEN, WHITE, and BLACK.

The syntax for enumerated constants is to write the keyword enum, followed by the type name, an open brace, each of the legal values separated by a comma, and finally a closing brace and a semicolon. Here's an example:

enum COLOR { RED, BLUE, GREEN, WHITE, BLACK };

This statement performs two tasks:

1. It makes COLOR the name of an enumeration, that is, a new type.

2. It makes RED a symbolic constant with the value 0, BLUE a symbolic ...