Class instance restriction

[wmheric]

Hi, I'm writing a class Card (playing cards), when I come across the member variables, I'm wondering what type of variables I should use for the suits and the ranks of the cards (well, no jokers atm):

- integers
* well...just as representations...but that may confuse the users in the future because suits and ranks are really not integers...

- enumerations
like enum SUIT = { SPADE = 1, HEART, /*...*/ };
* later when I come across decks of cards I'd like to sort the cards by casting them into, say, int, for the sake of easy comparisons (using > or < or ...), but I don't want to destroy the strong typing...
* plus, the purpose of enum is to make constants but a suit does not have to be constant (not in terms of a single card, but like decks of cards)
* I don't want to make these things global

- classes
make a SUIT class
Here comes my concerns:
* what should the member variables be, an int representing a SUIT? Are we going back to the "integers" method?
* There are only four suits. Firstly, I want to instantiate four const objects for (all) future uses (such as in the class Deck), how and where(in header or cpp) should I declare them?; secondly, how do you prevent the users from creating their own, new SUITs?

Thank you for reading :) I would really appreciate if you come up if with better alternatives.

[helios]

class Card{
    //...
    enum{
        SPADE=0,
        CLUB,
        HEART,
        DIAMOND
    };
    int suit;
    //...
};

Keep it simple.

[wmheric]

Do you make use of the int to create an object of Card? In other words, does the constructor take the form Card(int)?

[helios]

Yes.
If you want stronger typing, you can give the enum a name (e.g. SUIT) and have the constructor take that, instead. Then, you construct by passing Card::SPADE, etc. Conversion int->enum has to be explicit, but enum->int may be implicit.
But really, there isn't much difference. The compiler always treats enums as integers, anyway.

[wmheric]

I see. Thank you very much.