Question

What are the uses of the java’s int Enum pattern? can anyone help me to know more about the int enum pattern?

Answer 1

The int enum pattern (the use of static final int CONSTANT_NAME instead of using enums) is a historical artifact.

Originally, Java did not support enums, so in order to provide flags to methods and the likes, this was the only approach.

It provides some of the benefits of the modern enum approach:

• they improve the readability of your code
• they can be used in switch statements

but they also lack a few important features

• they are not type safe
• the constants are identical to their value; this means that they can be inlined by the compiler, and that you cannot determine the original constant from the serialized value.

To conclude: if you are working on a Java 1.5+ project, always use then modern enum pattern instead of the classical int Enum pattern.