Enumerators

Video Summary: https://youtu.be/ydCiWR3gwmo

An enumerator is a user-defined datatype, typically used to group related data into a set of "states." When you use an enumerator, the value will actually be stored as a number - the compiler does not keep track of the names you use. For example, you could create and use an enumerator for a stoplight as follows:

When you try to access the value of an enumerator, it will return which position that state was entered into the list. In the previous example, green is 0, yellow is 1, red is 2. You could change these values with the following:

Beyond readability and type security, another advantage of enumerators is that they can be used in switch statements, because they are stored as a number. In order to do this, you may need to use explicit typecasting, such as:

Exercise

Consider this solution to a previous exercise:

In this exercise, you will modify this example by adding an enumerator for the suit of the card and placing a symbol for hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades (♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ or h d c s) in the top left and bottom right corner of the card. Note that if you choose to use the symbols themselves, the code will likely behave differently than you might expect because of the way they are encoded.

Create an enumerator named suits that contains diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades
Create a random number between 0 and 3 to determine which suit to use, and typecast it to be used with your enum
Create a switch statement based on this enum and assign a symbol (♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ or h d c s) to a string. Note that if it is the symbol, it has to be a string, not a character, because symbols take up more space than characters allow
Adjust the card format to have the symbol you assign in the top left and bottom right corner. If you are using the symbols themselves, you will need to ADD space to setw for the bottom right because of the encoding

Solution

/*
file name: drawcard.cpp
author: Devon Blewett
purpose: This program generates a random number between 1 and 13 and places it in a box to represent a card.  It also selects a suit and places the symbol in the top left and bottom right corners.

Written for the Open Textbooks program
*/

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <time.h>

using namespace std;

int main() {
    
    // draw a card between 1 and 13
    srand(time(NULL));
    int card = rand() % 13 + 1;
  
    // enumerator datatype for the card suit
    enum suit {diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades};
    
    // draw a suit between 0 and 3
    suit currentSuit = suit(rand() % 4);
    // string variable to hold symbol
    string symbol;
     
    // switch to assign symbol to string
    switch(currentSuit){
        case diamonds:
            symbol = "♦";
            break;
        case hearts:
            symbol = "♥";
            break;
        case clubs:
            symbol = "♣";
            break;
        case spades:
            symbol = "♠";
            break;
        default:
            symbol = "";
    }
    
    // create the top line of dashes
    cout << setfill('-') << setw(7) << "" << endl;
    // create 2nd row, empty
    cout << "|" << symbol << setfill(' ') << setw(5) << "|" << endl;
    // put number in third row, left aligned to prevent card from breaking if double digit card drawn
    cout << "|  " << setw(2) << left << card  << " |" << endl;
    // create 4th row, reset align to right
    // space was added to setw here to accomodate using unicode symbol
    cout << "|" << right << setw(7) << symbol << "|" << endl;
    // create bottom row of dashes
    cout << setfill('-') << setw(7) << "" << endl;
    
    return 0;
}

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