Coding Conventions - Naming Enums

Coding Conventions - Naming Enums

Enums are classes and should follow the conventions for classes. Instances of an enum are constants and should follow the conventions for constants. So

enum Fruit {APPLE, ORANGE, BANANA, PEAR};

There is no reason for writing FruitEnum any more than FruitClass. You are just wasting four (or five) characters that add no information.

This approach is recommended by and used in the The Java™ Tutorial's examples themselves.

Java Enum Type Coding Convention

I would say that the enum itself, since it's a class, should follow the camel case convention as every class, while the entries of enum, since they are constants, should be upper case with underscore (eg. NOT_EQUAL).

The version uppercase without underscore is absolutely unreadable, never use it.

Enum Naming Convention - Plural

Microsoft recommends using singular for Enums unless the Enum represents bit fields (use the FlagsAttribute as well). See Enumeration Type Naming Conventions (a subset of Microsoft's Naming Guidelines).

To respond to your clarification, I see nothing wrong with either of the following:

public enum OrderStatus { Pending, Fulfilled, Error };

public class SomeClass { 
    public OrderStatus OrderStatus { get; set; }
}

or

public enum OrderStatus { Pending, Fulfilled, Error };

public class SomeClass {
    public OrderStatus Status { get; set; }
}

Naming of enums in Java: Singular or Plural?

Enums in Java (and probably enums in general) should be singular. The thinking is that you're not selecting multiple Protocols, but rather one Protocol of the possible choices in the list of values.

Note the absence of plurals: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/enum.html

Does the naming convention for ENUMs in C# usually have everything in UPPERCASE?

One should use Pascal case when they are typing enum types and values. This looks like

public enum Ati
{
    Two = 0,
    Three = 1,
    Five = 2,
}

According to Microsoft:

   Identifier      |   Case    |   Example
--------------------------------------------
Enumeration type   |  Pascal   |  ErrorLevel      
Enumeration values |  Pascal   |  FatalError

The only thing that you should make all caps like that are constant/final variables.

When you have local variables you should always use camel case.

thisIsCamelCasedVariable = "ya baby";

More about enums: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4x252001(v=vs.71).aspx

More about naming conventions C#: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229043%28v=vs.100%29.aspx

Javascript ENUM pattern naming convention

According to Google's coding conventions this is the correct way indeed to name an enum in javascript.

As requested here is a link.

Singular or plural for enumerations?

Here it is straight from Microsoft:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4x252001(VS.71).aspx

Use a singular name for most Enum
types, but use a plural name for Enum
types that are bit fields.

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