Enum vs Strongly typed enum

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OK, first example: old-style enums do not have their own scope:

enum Animals {Bear, Cat, Chicken};
enum Birds {Eagle, Duck, Chicken}; // error! Chicken has already been declared!

enum class Fruits { Apple, Pear, Orange };
enum class Colours { Blue, White, Orange }; // no problem!

Second, they implicitly convert to integral types, which can lead to strange behaviour:

bool b = Bear && Duck; // what?

Finally, you can specify the underlying integral type of C++11 enums:

enum class Foo : char { A, B, C};

Previously, the underlying type was not specified, which could cause compatibility problems between platforms. Edit It has been pointed out in comments that you can also specify the underlying integral type of an “old style” enum in C++11.

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