How to remove an item for a OR'd enum?
I have an enum like:
public enum Blah
{
RED = 2,
BLUE = 4,
GREEN = 8,
YELLOW = 16
}
Blah colors = Blah.RED | Blah.BLUE | Blah.YELLOW;
How could I remove the color blue from the variable colors?
You need to &
it with the ~
(complement) of 'BLUE'.
The complement operator essentially reverses or 'flips' all bits for the given data type. As such, if you use the AND
operator (&
) with some value (let's call that value 'X') and the complement of one or more set bits (let's call those bits Q
and their complement ~Q
), the statement X & ~Q
clears any bits that were set in Q
from X
and returns the result.
So to remove or clear the BLUE
bits, you use the following statement:
colorsWithoutBlue = colors & ~Blah.BLUE
colors &= ~Blah.BLUE // This one removes the bit from 'colors' itself
You can also specify multiple bits to clear, as follows:
colorsWithoutBlueOrRed = colors & ~(Blah.BLUE | Blah.RED)
colors &= ~(Blah.BLUE | Blah.RED) // This one removes both bits from 'colors' itself
or alternately...
colorsWithoutBlueOrRed = colors & ~Blah.BLUE & ~Blah.RED
colors &= ~Blah.BLUE & ~Blah.RED // This one removes both bits from 'colors' itself
So to summarize:
-
X | Q
sets bit(s)Q
-
X & ~Q
clears bit(s)Q
-
~X
flips/inverts all bits inX
The other answers are correct, but to specifically remove blue from the above you would write:
colors &= ~Blah.BLUE;
And not
it...............................
Blah.RED | Blah.YELLOW ==
(Blah.RED | Blah.BLUE | Blah.YELLOW) & ~Blah.BLUE;