In some cases, it's convenient for user interaction and debugging purposes to have a human-readable string representation of enums. So far, the best I have come up with is:
type ElementType int
const (
Fire = ElementType(iota)
Air
Water
Earth
)
var elementTypeMap = map[ElementType]string{
Fire: "The Fiery Fire",
Air: "The Airy Air",
Water: "The Watery Water",
Earth: "The Earthy Earth",
}
func (el ElementType) String() string {
return elementTypeMap[el]
}
The above, allows me to use and pass the enum as an int, keeping its standard performance, and to easily print its string representation anywhere. The only drawback is that there is an amount of boilerplate code that adds up if you have many enum types: I would be rather happy to avoid it.
Is there a way, preferably an idiomatic one, to reduce the boilerplate code above?