Some time ago I submitted an article to CodeProject and I thought I’d post a link to it here. It’s not a new idea, but I think a novel implementation. The article’s purpose is to provide functionality like an Enum, but using a string as the target data type.
I’ve actually used it quite frequently at my job at JE Pistons. We deal with a lot of text databases and so most of our flag fields are one character strings. This is a lifesaver by not having to constantly refer to item lists.
Anyhow, here’s the link: CodeProject: StringEnum That Works Like System.Enum