Thread: variable of type enum to be entered by user

This is an assignment for an online course:

"Create a set/list of enumerated constants called week that contain the days of the week. Have a variable named today of type week.Assign a value to today. if it is Mon through Fri printf("Blah")
if it is Sat or Sun... BLAh."

In RL if I were to use this I would want the numbers to be on this side of the program and have the user enter a string to display the correct output. I tried to do it several different ways but was only succesful when entering the numerical version of the enum on the user side. If I entered the word "Mon", on my switch it would default or run time fail. If I entered 1 it would display the correct output. So why use this enumerated number set up?

I tried to set it up with the user entering a day of the week, but I couldn't get a %s to beaccepted, only %d. So are enumerations only for the programer to remember what the ints are related too?

Originally Posted by Clayg

I tried to set it up with the user entering a day of the week, but I couldn't get a %s to beaccepted, only %d. So are enumerations only for the programer to remember what the ints are related too?

Yes... but you could define a lookup table for it.
....like...making an array of strings where the enum value of a day corresponds to the data stored at that particular index.

Originally Posted by Clayg

I tried to set it up with the user entering a day of the week, but I couldn't get a %s to beaccepted, only %d. So are enumerations only for the programer to remember what the ints are related too?

Yes... It's not user accessible.

As manasij is suggesting you can use an array of user entered strings. This will let you search for a string and get the index or go to the index and get the string... which is most likely what you're trying to do.