Enum vs constants decision in C Sharp (C#) - Hands-On Comparison

Enum vs Constants Decision in C#

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple program to manage the status of orders in a store. Each order can have a status like Pending, Shipped, or Delivered.You want to decide whether to use constants or an enum to represent these statuses in your code.

🎯 Goal: Create a program that first uses constants to represent order statuses, then switches to using an enum. Finally, print the status of an order using the enum.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create constants for order statuses with exact names and values

Create an enum for order statuses with exact names

Declare a variable with an enum value

Print the enum value to show the order status

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Enums and constants are used in many programs to represent fixed sets of options, like order statuses, user roles, or colors.

💼 Career

Understanding when to use enums or constants is important for writing clear, maintainable code in professional software development.

1

Create constants for order statuses

Create three public constants called Pending, Shipped, and Delivered inside a public static class OrderStatusConstants. Assign the string values "Pending", "Shipped", and "Delivered" respectively.

C Sharp (C#)

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use public const string inside a static class to create constants.

2

Create an enum for order statuses

Create a public enum called OrderStatus with the members Pending, Shipped, and Delivered.

C Sharp (C#)

public static class OrderStatusConstants
{
    public const string Pending = "Pending";
    public const string Shipped = "Shipped";
    public const string Delivered = "Delivered";
}

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use public enum OrderStatus and list the status names separated by commas.

3

Declare a variable with an enum value

Declare a variable called currentStatus of type OrderStatus and set it to OrderStatus.Shipped.

C Sharp (C#)

public static class OrderStatusConstants
{
    public const string Pending = "Pending";
    public const string Shipped = "Shipped";
    public const string Delivered = "Delivered";
}

public enum OrderStatus
{
    Pending,
    Shipped,
    Delivered
}

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the enum type OrderStatus and assign the member OrderStatus.Shipped to the variable.

4

Print the enum value

Write a Console.WriteLine statement to print the value of currentStatus.

C Sharp (C#)

public static class OrderStatusConstants
{
    public const string Pending = "Pending";
    public const string Shipped = "Shipped";
    public const string Delivered = "Delivered";
}

public enum OrderStatus
{
    Pending,
    Shipped,
    Delivered
}

OrderStatus currentStatus = OrderStatus.Shipped;

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Console.WriteLine(currentStatus); inside a Main method to print the enum value.