Using " " and " " to compare enum's ordinals ?

Question

heya,
I'm just wondering if it's possible to use the "<" and ">" operators with enum types in Java 1.5, in order to compare ordinal values.
Basically, I'm thinking of using this for security levels, as in:
public enum SecurityLevel { admin, manager, staff, user }and later on, in the methods, you check whether the SecurityLevel is equal to or above a certain level
if (curr_seclev > manager) {
     //We perform the action
} else
     //Security level not high enough..we throw an exception? Or is there a better way to handle this?
}Or if you could recommend a better way of achieving this, that would be cool =).
Thanks,
Victor

Answer 1

heya,
Thanks to all for the great replies =).
enum SecLevels { admin, manager, staff, user };
SecLevels iamauser = SecLevels.user;
if (curr_secLevel.ordinal() < iamauser.ordinal()) {
     System.out.println("blah");
}works great. However, this means I need to have a "iamauser" enum object to compare whatever I am comparing to. I tried using SecLevel.admin.ordinal(), to see if I can use ordinal() on the enum itself, but that fails with
EnumOrds.java:15: cannot find symbol
symbol  : method ordinals()
location: class EnumOrds.SecLevels
                if (SecLevels.admin.ordinals() < SecLevels.user.ordinals()) {Is there any other way of evaluating up the ordinal for a enum constant without having to create an object first?
Thanks,
Victor