Effective Java

by Joshua Bloch

Until 2006, two years after enums were added to Java, Pluto was a planet. This raises the question “what happens when you remove an element from an enum type?” The answer is that any client program that doesn’t refer to the removed element will continue to work fine. So, for example, our WeightTable program would simply print a table with one fewer row. And what of a client program that refers to the removed element (in this case, Planet.Pluto)? If you recompile the client program, the compilation will fail with a helpful error message at the line that refers to the erstwhile planet; if you fail to recompile the client, it will throw a helpful exception from this line at runtime. This is the best behavior you could hope for, far better than what you’d get with the int enum pattern.