Enumerated types tutorial

This screen capture (IDA 3.66) shows how IDA handles high level structures. This tutorial shows you how to obtain this result.

You can use IDA to interactively define and manipulate enumerated types in the disassembly. Consider this simple sample C program:

enum color_t {
    BLACK,          /* dark colors */
    BLUE,
    GREEN,
    CYAN,
    RED,
    MAGENTA,
    BROWN,
    LIGHTGRAY,
    DARKGRAY,           /* light colors */
    LIGHTBLUE,
    LIGHTGREEN,
    LIGHTCYAN,
    LIGHTRED,
    LIGHTMAGENTA,
    YELLOW,
    WHITE
};

enum day_t { MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THUSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY };

enum bool_t { FALSE, TRUE };

int is_suitable_color(day_t day,color_t color) {
  if ( (day == SUNDAY || day == SATURDAY) && color == RED ) return TRUE;
  if ( color == BLACK || color == BLUE ) return TRUE;
  return FALSE;
}

In order to use meaningful names instead of numbers, we open the enums window and press insert to define a new enumerated type.