Question

I have an enum

string name;

public enum Color
{
  Red,
  Green,
  Yellow
}

How to set it to NULL on load.

name = "";
Color color = null; //error

Edited:
My bad, I didn’t explain it properly. But all the answers related to nullable is perfect. My situation is What if, I have get/set for the enum in a class with other elements like name, etc. On page load I initiallize the class and try to default the values to null. Here is the scenario (Code is in C#):

namespace Testing
{
    public enum ValidColors
    {
        Red,
        Green,
        Yellow
    }

    public class EnumTest
    {
        private string name;
        private ValidColors myColor;

        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }

        public ValidColors MyColor
        {
            get { return myColor; }
            set { myColor = value; }
        }

    }

    public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
    {       
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            EnumTest oEnumTest = new EnumTest();
            oEnumTest.Name = "";
            oEnumTest.MyColor = null; //???
        }
    }

}

Then using the suggestions below I changed the above code to make it work with get and set methods. I just need to add “?” in EnumTest class during declaration of private enum variable and in get/set method:

public class EnumTest
{
    private string name;
    private ValidColors? myColor; //added "?" here in declaration and in get/set method

    public string Name
    {
        get { return name; }
        set { name = value; }
    }

    public ValidColors? MyColor
    {
        get { return myColor; }
        set { myColor = value; }
    }

}

Thanks all for the lovely suggestions.

Answer 1

You can either use the “?” operator for a nullable type.

public Color? myColor = null;

Or use the standard practice for enums that cannot be null by having the FIRST value in the enum (aka 0) be the default value. For example in a case of color None.

public Color myColor = Color.None;