Java 11 and 12 – New Features

Examples from the past – changes to define enums

Prior to the introduction of enums, developers often used public, static, and final variables to define constants. The following is an example:

class Size { 
    public final static int SMALL = 1; 
    public final static int MEDIUM = 2; 
    public final static int LARGE = 3; 
}

The major drawback of using public, static, final, and int variables is type safety; any int value could be assigned to a variable of the type int, instead of the Size.SMALL, Size.MEDIUM, or Size.LARGE constants.

Java 5 introduced enums, an addition to the language construct, to enable developers to define an enumeration of constants. Here's a quick example:

enum Size {SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE} class SmallTShirt { Size size = Size.SMALL; ...