Overriding an enum type?

Question

Hi Java experts,
I would appreciate some help about a small problem I have with some java code of my own. I'm using Java 1.5. I currently have written a class that takes a filename and extract records from a corresponding binary file. The structure of the file is known and is stored in a enum:
public class ParseFile  {
    private static enum TicketField {
        FieldA(1, FieldType.TYPE_INT),
        FieldB(1, FieldType.TYPE_INT),
        FieldC(2, FieldType.TYPE_STRING),
        // Stores number of fields in record. BTW is this the right way to do it ?
        public static final int numberOfElements = TicketField.values().length;
        // Length of field in bytes.
        private int size;
        // Type of field, enumerated.
        private FieldType type;
        // Constructor.
        TicketField(int size, FieldType type) {
            this.size = size;
            this.type = type;
    public ARRAY fetchRows(String filename) {
    // Create a new row structure.
    Vector<Object> row = new Vector<Object>(TicketField.numberOfElements);
    // Extract rows according to definition of fields above.
    blah blah
    }With this code I can call fetchRows('my_file') and get the list of records in it. Now I would like to extend this piece of code to be able to process different types of files, with different number of fields, different fields definitions, etc; however the extraction algorithm, once the file structure is given, remains the same. I would eg call fetchRows('my_file_cll', type='cll'), fetchRows('my_file_cat', type='cat'), etc. The structure of the returned resultsets would differ btw.
So conceptually I would like to subclass ParseFile, overriding not the method (fetchRows) but the enum... I can't think of a way to do this. Is it possible to define a kind of "abstract enum" that would be used in the code but instanciated only in a subclass? Otherwise is there a neat way to obtain this result in Java, avoiding to duplicate the code n times?
Thanks for your help,
Chris

Answer 1

Maybe something on the lines ofpublic class EnumFieldTest<E extends Enum<E>>     {
  private final Enum<E>[] myEnum;
  public EnumFieldTest(Enum<E>[] myEnum) {
    this.myEnum = myEnum;
  public void printEnumValues() {
    for (Enum<E> enum1 : myEnum) {
      System.out.println(enum1);
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    new EnumFieldTest<TicketField>(TicketField.values()).printEnumValues();
enum TicketField {
  FieldA, FieldB, FieldC
}db