Question

For example:

(1).SomeFunction().Equals("one")
(2).SomeFunction().Equals("two")

I really only need it for digits 1-9 in the case I’m working with, should I just use a switch/select case?

Update I won’t need localization in this case either.

Update 2 Here’s what I ended up using:

Private Enum EnglishDigit As Integer
    zero
    one
    two
    three
    four
    five
    six
    seven
    eight
    nine
End Enum

(CType(someIntThatIsLessThanTen, EnglishDigit)).ToString()

Answer 1

How about an enumeration?

enum Number
{
    One = 1, // default value for first enum element is 0, so we set = 1 here
    Two,
    Three,
    Four,
    Five,
    Six,
    Seven,
    Eight,
    Nine,
}

Then you can type things like…

((Number)1).ToString()

If you need localization then you can add a DescriptionAttribute to each enum value. The attribute’s Description property would store the name of the resourse item’s key.

enum Number
{
    [Description("NumberName_1")]
    One = 1, // default value for first enum element is 0, so we set = 1 here 

    [Description("NumberName_2")]
    Two,

    // and so on...
}

The following function will grab the value of the Description property from the attribute

public static string GetDescription(object value)
{
    DescriptionAttribute[] attributes = null;
    System.Reflection.FieldInfo fi = value.GetType().GetField(value.ToString());
    if (fi != null)
    {
        attributes = (DescriptionAttribute[])fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);
    }

    string description = null;
    if ((attributes != null) && (attributes.Length > 0))
    {
        description = attributes[0].Description;
    }

    return description;
}

This can be called in the following manner:

GetDescription(((Number)1))

From that you can then pull the relevant value from the resource file, or just call .ToString() if null was returned.

Edit

Various commenters have pointed out (and I have to agree) that it would be simpler to just use the enum value names to reference localised strings.