Enums and Constants. Which to use when?

Question

I was doing some reading on enums and find them very similar to declaring constants. How would I know when to use a constant rather than an enum or vice versa. What are some of the advantages of using enums?

Answer 1

Enums are very useful when describing a variable that can be one a certain set of states or values. For example you could have an enum called "PrimaryColor" where the only possible states of that enum are "Red", "Green", and "Blue". You can now declare variables that are of the type "PrimaryColor" and those variables can only be assigned to "Red", "Green", or "Blue". As an added bonus most languages allow you to correlate these values with either integers or some other type of data so that you can more easily compare the enum states or convert them or do arithmetic with them.