No identifier at all in C# may begin with a number (for lexical/parsing reasons). Consider adding a [Description] attribute to your enum values:
public enum myEnum
{
[Description("1A")]
OneA = 1,
[Description("2A")]
TwoA = 2,
[Description("3A")]
ThreeA = 3,
};
Then you can get the description from an enum value like this:
((DescriptionAttribute)Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(
typeof(myEnum).GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static)
.Single(x => (myEnum)x.GetValue(null) == enumValue),
typeof(DescriptionAttribute))).Description
Based on XSA’s comment below, I wanted to expand on how one could make this more readable. Most simply, you could just create a static (extension) method:
public static string GetDescription(this Enum value)
{
return ((DescriptionAttribute)Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(
value.GetType().GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static)
.Single(x => x.GetValue(null).Equals(value)),
typeof(DescriptionAttribute)))?.Description ?? value.ToString();
}
It’s up to you whether you want to make it an extension method, and in the implementation above, I’ve made it fallback to the enum’s normal name if no [DescriptionAttribute]
has been provided.
Now you can get the description for an enum value via:
myEnum.OneA.GetDescription()