Question about enumerations.

[AlitCandle]

I thought that enumerations were just an easy way to have a list or a color code or something along those lines. I'm following a tutorial (game from scratch..pang!). In that tutorial he has an enum MenuResult, but after that he puts it before all of his functions like this.

class MainMenu
{

public:
	enum MenuResult { Nothing, Exit, Play };	
	
	struct MenuItem
		{
		public:
			sf::Rect<int> rect;
			MenuResult action;
		};
	
	MenuResult Show(sf::RenderWindow& window);

private:
	MenuResult GetMenuResponse(sf::RenderWindow& window);
	MenuResult HandleClick(int x, int y);
	std::list<MenuItem> _menuItems;
};

Then in the code when he is defining the functions he does this.

MainMenu::MenuResult MainMenu::Show(sf::RenderWindow& window)
{
...
}

MainMenu::MenuResult MainMenu::HandleClick(int x, int y)
{
...
}

and so on for all the rest. Can anyone explain how enums can come before functions like that?


EDIT:
This is a link to the tutorial if you want all of the code for whatever reason.
http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Game-From-Scratch-CPP-Edition-Part-3.aspx

[Peter87]

MenuResult is an enum type and those functions have MenuResult as return type. Possible values the functions can return is Nothing, Exit and Play.

[vlad from moscow]

MenuResult is a member of the class MainMenu. So when a member of a class is used outside the class scope it shall be prefixed by the class name as, for example, here

MainMenu::MenuResult MainMenu::Show(sf::RenderWindow& window)
{
...
}

Any other class may define its own member enum MenuResult.