Question

In my class I defined an enum like this:

class myClass 
{
 public:
    enum access {
      forL,
      forM,
      forA
    };
    typedef access AccessType;
    AccessType aType;
};

Later in defined an object like this:

myClass ob;
ob->aType = 0;

However I get this error:

error: invalid conversion from 'int' to 'myClass::AccessType {aka myClass::access}' [-fpermissive]

Don’t enum fields map to integers?

Answer 1

No, they are stored as integers but they are distinct types (e.g. you can even overload based on the enum type). You must convert explicitly:

myClass ob;
ob->aType = (myClass::AccessType)0;

or ever better write the corresponding named value of the enum:

myClass ob;
ob->aType = myClass::forL;

Or perhaps if you want to use the enum just as a set of integer constants, change the type of the field:

class myClass 
{
 public:
    enum {
      forL,
      forM,
      forA
    };
    int aType; // just stores numbers
};

Conversion from enum to int is implicit.