Question

I want to declare a new enum with non-default underlying type. This works:

public enum MyEnum : short
{ A, B, C, }

But I don’t understand the reason why this doesn’t compile:

public enum MyEnum : System.Int16
{ A, B, C, }

Compiler says

Type byte, sbyte, short, ushort, int,
uint, long, or ulong expected

I understand that short is an alias for Int16 on all .NET versions (32/64 bit flavors included). I don’t see why the compiler gives a different meaning to the alias in that particular case.

Any explanation?

Answer 1

The syntax is correct. C# specification explicitly states that the enum’s underlying type must be byte, sbyte, short, ushort, int, uint, long or ulong.

Read what Microsoft says about this here.