Question

I want to make an enum in such a way that I can & parameters after |ing them in.

Can I simply do:

enum Things
{
   Something,
SomethingElse
};

Or must I be careful to give them specific numbers for this to work?

Also if a value, like say, 3, has already been |=’d in, would |= it in again cause this to malfunction (as in, if(attributes & 3) would no longer work)

Thanks

Answer 1

Then define your enum as:

enum Things
{
   Something = 1       //0000 0001
   SomethingElse = 2;  //0000 0010
   SomethingX = 4;     //0000 0100
   SomethingY = 8;     //0000 1000
   SomethingZ = 16;    //0001 0000
};

The idea is, only one bit in the binary representation should be 1, others should be 0, as shown in the comments above. Also, I used 8 bits only in the comment, that doesn’t mean that the enum values are one byte size. I only used them for convenience. Enum values can be very large, can hold even long.