Functions that return Enums

ccodefunction

In Atmel ASF I found this piece of code 

enum status_code eeprom_emulator_init(void)
{ 

enum status_code error_code = STATUS_OK;
struct nvm_config config;
struct nvm_parameters parameters;

/* Retrieve the NVM controller configuration - enable manual page writing
 * mode so that the emulator has exclusive control over page writes to
 * allow for caching */
nvm_get_config_defaults(&config);
config.manual_page_write = true;

/* Apply new NVM configuration */
do {
    error_code = nvm_set_config(&config);
} while (error_code == STATUS_BUSY);

/* Get the NVM controller configuration parameters */
nvm_get_parameters(&parameters);

/* Ensure the device fuses are configured for at least one master page row,
 * one user EEPROM data row and one spare row */
if (parameters.eeprom_number_of_pages < (3 * NVMCTRL_ROW_PAGES)) {
    return STATUS_ERR_NO_MEMORY;
}

As far as I know about enums they are used for variables, then how is it also used to contain instructions in above code.?

Best Answer

The enum doesn't contain the code. The function is an ordinary function that happens to return a value of type enum status_code.

You don't normally see this syntax, because most programmers would also create a typedef for the enum status_code and use that to declare the type of the function's return value.

For example:

typedef enum status_code status_code_t;

status_code_t eeprom_emulator_init (void)
{
    ...
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