The old enum definition was a bit lame. Enums were almost interchangeable with an int and still not. This could cause some problems. With C++11 these problems have been resolve by introducing the enum class. An enum can be defined like this:
enum class Fruit
{
Apple,
Banana,
Kiwi = 100,
Pear /* = 101 */
};That new type has the following properties:
- It is type safe. The type is not implicitly converted to int nor comparable with int. If you want to turn such an enum into an int you need to use a cast. - The underlying type of the enum is known and can even be specified. Default type is int. - The scope of the enumerators are within the enumeration. So enumerations defined at the same scope can have enumerators with the same name.