Get enum value "string", and get int value of that

Question

Sorry if the title is confusing, but I literally don't even know how to summarise this into a title. So here's the problem:

I have a list of combat moves for a character. I have an animation for each of those possible moves. When the "combat manager" (instantiated to manage each individual fight) works out what move the enemy and your person will make, it should tell the Animator to play the animation specific to the selected move. I'm really not sure how to go about this so:

The player's Animator has a state for each possible move, containing that move's animation. The script controlling the Animator has a public enum "CombatMove" containing every possible move (ie. CombatMove.WhicheverMove). So the Combat Manager will get the name of the move (eg. "Right Middle Jab"), remove the spaces and search for an enum value whose name is that string (eg. CombatMove.RightMiddleJab). Now it has the corresponding enum value, it retrieves the int value of that (eg. 0). It then sends that int value to the Animator, where each move's transition will occur if the int value equals the move's int value on the enum. So summed up:

move's string name, turned into an enum value name, turned into its int value, used to specify which move animation should be played.

The questions:

1) How do you find an enum value whose name equals a given string?

2) How do you get the int value of that enum value?

If this is confusing, please comment what makes no sense and I will try to explain, I'm honestly so lost that I don't even know how to ask what I need to ask.

EDIT:

IF anyone is wondering what I mean by 'int value', Fafase's answer at http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/764091/using-c-enums-to-control-an-animator.html says that each enum value has an int value by default, which can be used in animation conditions; however I have no idea how to access them, which part 2 of my problem.

Answer 1

Would this do it?

enum CombatMove
{
   RightMiddleJab,
   LeftMiddleJab,
   RightUpperJab,
   LeftUpperJab,

   LastCombatMove,
   Unknown
}

call example..

        CombatMove move;
        if( findCombatMove("RightUpperJab", out move) == true )
        {
            // do something with move
            int intValue = (int)(move);
        }

.

    static bool findCombatMove( String text, out CombatMove move )
    {
        for( int c = 0; c < (int)CombatMove.LastCombatMove; ++c)
        {
            String enumAsString = ((CombatMove)(c)).ToString();

            if (enumAsString == text)
            {
                move = (CombatMove)(c);
                return true;
            }
        }

        move = CombatMove.Unknown;
        return false;
    }

It would be a lot of string compares though. Could you not pass the enum directly instead of the string ?

Answer 2

You can override the size of the enum, if needed:

enum CombatMove : int //implied, 32-bits, max value 2147483647
{
   RightMiddleJab = 0, //0
   LeftMiddleJab = 1,  //1
   RightUpperJab = 3,  //3
   LeftUpperJab,       //4
}

And since you can cast them, there is probably no reason to refer to them by name:

CombatMove combatMove = CombatMove.LeftUpperJab;
int combatMoveValue = (int)combatMove;

I don't know exactly what you are trying to index, both types are arbitrary:

using System.Collections.Generic;
Dictionary<CombatMove, AnimationClip> AnimationClipsByEnum;
AnimationClipsByEnum[CombatMove.RightMiddleJab].ClearCurves();

Strings

If you really do have a good reason, you can use the System.Enum class:

string[] CombatMoveNames = System.Enum.GetNames(typeof(CombatMove));

The dictionary for strings:

using System.Collections.Generic;
Dictionary<string, AnimationClip> AnimationClipsByName;
AnimationClipsByName["RightMiddleJab"].ClearCurves();

Parsing a string back into to an enum:

    string combatString = "RightMiddleJab";
    try
    {
        CombatMove combatMove = 
           (CombatMove)System.Enum.Parse(typeof(CombatMove), combatString);
    }
    catch (System.ArgumentException)
    {
        Debug.Log("Invalid enum string: " + combatString);
        throw;
    }