How to get enum index value from an instance of the enum

Question

I have some VB code where I have an enum and I have to convert the enum value to a corresponding string that is NOT the enum name. I do this by creating an array of these strings. The index into the array matches the underlying integer value of the enum value. The data portion looks like this:

Public Enum MessageOptions

SingleLine

TableOfLines

TableOfIDS

SingleID

End Enum

Private MessageOptionsText(3)

The array set up looks like this:

    `MessageOptionsText(0) = "S"`
````        MessageOptionsText(1) = "T"`

`        MessageOptionsText(2) = "N"`

`        MessageOptionsText(3) = "1"`

The value I want is assigned like this where MessageOption is of type MessageOptions:

```scala
    `wkRequestHeader += MessageOptionsText(Int(MessageOption))`
```How do I do this in c#?

Answer 1

It is possible to use arrays in C# too, however, since the enumeration values are not always sequential starting from 0, it is more reliable to use a dictionary, for example.

enum MessageOptions
{
    SingleLine,
    TableOfLines,
    TableOfIDS,
    SingleID,
}

. . .

Dictionary<MessageOptions, string> MessageOptionsText = new( ) 
{
    [MessageOptions.SingleLine] = "S",
    [MessageOptions.TableOfLines] = "T",
    [MessageOptions.TableOfIDS] = "N",
    [MessageOptions.SingleID] = "1", 
};


// example:

MessageOptions messageOption = MessageOptions.TableOfIDS;

wkRequestHeader += MessageOptionsText[messageOption];

It is also possible to use attributes.