Question

What is the point of having

enum SomeEnum : byte // <----
{
  SomeValue = 0x01,
  ...
}

when you have to make a cast just to assign it to the same type of variable as the enums underlying type?

byte b = (byte)SomeEnum.SomeValue;

Answer 1

Not much point, really, except that if the default underlying type (int) is not enough for you, ie. you want to use higher integer values than that then you can make it long. This can be useful when you have a [Flags] enum with more than 32 values.

You can make it byte or short just to restrict the range of values, but it will actually still take 4 bytes when used as a local variable (ie. same as int). It may however occupy less memory if used as an array.