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Enumeration????

I have a situation in which an enumeration would be perfect, except the underlying value needs to be a string instead of a number. I know there must be a simple solution, but I cannot think of it right off hand. For example:

public enum Fields{PatName, PatDOB, PatAddress};

But I want the value of Fields.PatName to have a string value of "name" and Fields.PatDOB to have a string value of "dob", etc. Do I need to use a hashtable for this. What would be the best way to accomplish this????

Thanks,

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ozymandias

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SOLUTION

AngryBinary

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ozymandias

Yup, either const or static readonly.
This works nicely :

      public class FieldNames{

            public const string PatDOB = "dob";
            public const string PatName = "name";
            public const string PatAddress = "address";

            public static object Parse(string FieldName){
                  Type t = typeof(FieldNames);
                  FieldInfo f = t.GetField(FieldName);
                  if (f == null){
                        throw new ArgumentException(FieldName + " is not a valid Field Name.", "FieldName");
                  }
                  object o = f.GetValue(null);
                  return o;
            }

      }

gvector1

ASKER

Excellent solutions. Thank you both.