Question

Im working on java, I have created an enum as follows:

public enum myEnum
{
    india,
    russian,
    england,
    north America
}

Above example gives errors while using space in the name of element (i.e. north America).
Any suggestions how to resolve above issue?

Answer 1

You can’t put a space in the middle of an identifier.

Doing so ends that identifier and the parser assumes whatever comes next is a valid token in that statement’s context. There are few (if any) places that would be legal.

Conventional Java value names would be:

INDIA,         // Or India,
RUSSIA,        //    Russia,
NORTH_AMERICA; //    NorthAmerica;

An enum can have associated properties, like human-readable names, e.g.,

public enum CountryAndOneContinent {
    INDIA("India"),
    RUSSIA("Russia"),
    NORTH_AMERICA("North America");

    private String displayName;

    CountryAndOneContinent(String displayName) {
        this.displayName = displayName;
    }

    public String displayName() { return displayName; }

    // Optionally and/or additionally, toString.
    @Override public String toString() { return displayName; }
}

---

I’m ambivalent about using toString to provide presentation-layer representations.

I prefer methods communicate their purpose explicitly–it’s more expressive and obvious.

toString is pretty generic, and allows only a single representation. Multiple output formats may be required depending on context, parameters, etc. which toString doesn’t allow.

Advantages of toString include using default string operations on the object, and in this case, using valueOf to directly translate from the human-readable version to the enum value.