What's a good name for an Enum for Yes & No values

Question

Background

In a C# command-line app I'm writing, several of the parameters have "yes" and "no" as the possible values.

I am storing their input using the Enum type shown below.

enum YesNo
{
     Yes,
     No
}

Which is fine - the code works. No problem there.

NOTE: Yes, I could store these as bool (that's how it used to work). My design choice is to be explicit about the Yes/No choice made by the user because they will see this printed in other contexts and I'd like it to be more obvious what the choice was.

My Question

• It just seems odd to have an enum called "YesNo" - what are some suggestions for better names for an enum for "yes" and "no" values.

Answer 1

EUserAction ?

You described it as some user action. You could also be more specific, though. The name allows for some additional choices in the future. (The name should be what the choice is for, not what the choices are)

However, for your other, subtle question:

because they will see this printed in other contexts and I'd like it to be more obvious what the choice was.

it shouldn't really matter what the user sees. The data model can be very different from what you present to the user. A bool would have sufficed. Is there a possibility for additional actions in the future?

Answer 2

• YesNo
• Choice
• BinaryChoice

Or just use a boolean.

Answer 3

Positive? Instead of true or false ala boolean, you have whether the end user is positive to the parameter or not.

Answer 4

I would be confused to see an enum used for a boolean. You say that:

NOTE: Yes, I could store these as bool (that's how it used to work). My design choice is to be explicit about the Yes/No choice made by the user because they will see this
printed in other contents and I'd like it to be more obvious what the choice was.

I fail to see how a "Yes" or "No" is any more "explicit" than a true or false.

Answer 5

ResponseEnum or EResponse or UserResponse depending on your conventions.

I wouldn't limit yourself to only Yes or No as in the future you may want to add functionality that required an Unsure response also.

Answer 6

You say you don't want to use bool because it will be printed out for the user to see amongst other contents. That suggests the problem isn't in storage but in display. By all means present true/false as Yes/No, but there's no need to create a whole new type for it IMO.

EDIT: In addition to suggesting you don't use an enum in the first place, I'd strongly recommend that if you do use an enum, you change the order or use explicit values. Having Yes=0, No=1 will be really confusing if you ever end up seeing the values as integers.

Answer 7

I think YesNo is just fine. Consider things like "MB_OK" and "MB_YESNO" ... I know it's not a type but anything that's self-explanatory should be fine.

Answer 8

Is there any possibility for having option other than yes/no.For just 2 option stick with boolean.Try to modify the display area alone

Answer 9

I read your updated explanation, but I still feel this is a poor choice. Booleans exist exactly for this purpose. It is your responsibility to ensure that when "they will see this printed in other contents" appropriate text is outputted. This could be as simple as:

Console.WriteLine(_("Using Foo: ") + (useFoo ? _("Yes") : _("No")));

while still having full support for localization. useFoo is of course a parameter telling the function whether it is using foo. :)

The _ is short for the gettext function (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/), which is available for C# (http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/gettext/C_0023.html).

Answer 10

(Humour - please don't take this seriously...)

I'm surprised no-one's suggested this yet:

public enum UserWtf
{
    No,
    Yes,
    FileNotFound
}

Answer 11

I don't see the point of this enum unless there were some other values besides Yes and No. That's just a bool. And making an enum just so you don't have to type out yes or no seems kind of silly.

Answer 12

I'd want to call it:

enum Boolean
{
     Yes,
     No
}

No, wait, there is already a built in boolean type you can use.

If your only reason for using an enum here is because there is a convenient conversion to/from a string that you want to show the user, then you are going to get bitten very badly down the track as you do more sophisticated things. A separation of model from view will server you well. Read up on MVC and/or MVVM patterns.

I might also suggest that a simple boolean with some custom attributes that define the display strings to use in place of "true" and "false" might suffice here. You can then write your own to/from string methods that look for your custom attributes.

Answer 13

I would not use a enum at all, just roll your own typeconverter and use booleans.

Answer 14

I guess there is a problem with displaying bool values. It is better to create simple wrapper that stores boolean allowing you to display them as Yes/No or True/False.

Answer 15

I'd suggest you use a name that indicates the Value which is set to Yes or No.

E.G.

public enum Married
{
    YES,
    NO
}

Answer 16

Use a bool, combined with bool.TrueString and bool.FalseString for display purposes.