# Enums and Pattern Matching - The Rust Programming Language

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# Enums and Pattern Matching

In this chapter, we’ll look at enumerations, also referred to as enums. Enums allow you to define a type by enumerating its possible variants. First we’ll define and use an enum to show how an enum can encode meaning along with data. Next, we’ll explore a particularly useful enum, called `Option`, which expresses that a value can be either something or nothing. Then, we’ll look at how pattern matching in the `match` expression makes it easy to run different code for different values of an enum. Finally, we’ll cover how the `if let` construct is another convenient and concise idiom available to handle enums in your code.