I have a function that accepts an Enum (The base class) as a parameter:
public void SomeFunction(Enum e); However I can't for some reason cast it to int. I can get the name of the enumeration value but not it's integral representation.
I really don't care about the type of the enumeration, I just need the integral value. Should I pass an int instead? Or am I doing something wrong here?
int i = Convert.ToInt32(e); This will work regardless of the underlying storage of the enum, whereas the other solutions will throw an InvalidCastException if the enum is stored in anything other than int32 (say, a byte or short)
Enum isn't actually an enum... confusing. It is a boxed copy of an enum; still, the following should work:
int i = (int)(object)e; (this (object) cast doesn't add a box, since it is already boxed)
Note also that not all enums are based on int; this unboxing trick may fail for non-int enums.
Enum is known (e.g. Reflection.BindingFlags) one may cast to that and then simply use that as an integer or long value. That will work for enum types whose underlying type is no bigger than the type one is using.Int32 intValue = (Int32)Enum.Parse(e.GetType(), e.ToString()); 
(int)e, which gives "Cannot convert type 'System.Enum' to 'int'"