How to convert string to enum? [CS/C#]

[Shaitan00]

Okay, little background information - I am reading information from a text file (level.txt) and it contains details such as:
[0,7] = ExtWall;
This indicates that at location 0,7 on my map I should place an "Exterior Wall", therefore I need to create an object (of class Wall) to put there.
Now the fun part is the constructor of class "Wall" looks like "public Wall(ObjectType _objectType)" (and this cannot be changed)...

So finally "ObjectType" is an ENUM that I made to maintain a list of the different allowed object types, it looks like:

public enum ObjectType
{
	Wall,
	ExtWall,
	Brick,
	Floor,
}

So, now to the problem - the information I read from the text file is a STRING value "ExtWall" (sObject) and I want to use that to create a Wall object of ObjectType.ExtWall so I need a way to CAST (or something) my string as an ObjectType...

Currently if I do something like the following (which is where I am stuck) it complains about being unable to convert it, I have tried a few different approaches (like trying to make the string "ObjectType."+sObject but that didn’t work as expected...) but nothing works...

[0, 0] = new Wall(sObject);	// Where sObject is the string taken from the text file

Error: The best overloaded method match for 'Wall(ObjectType)' has some invalid arguments
Error: Argument '1': cannot convert from 'string' to 'ObjectType'

Now I know I could use a SWITCH statement or something simplistic like that - but I don't want to have to maintain this code, I want to be able to add a value to my ObjectType enum and trust that the value taken from the file matches, that way I don't have to keep adding to a switch statement every time I add a different type of wall (just add it to the enum and ensure my text file is perfect).

So how can I cast my string as an ObjectType enum? Or does anyone know of a nicer more conventional (or non-) approach?
Any ideas, hints, and help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

 

[Cags]

Personally I've found the easiest way to serialise an Enum is by converting it to it's integer value. This is helpfull becaue C# allows us to cast enums too and fron their integer value.

TestEnum myTestEnum = TestEnum.Two;
int enumAsInt = (int)myTestEnum;
TestEnum backAsEnum = (TestEnum)enumAsInt;

public enum TestEnum
{
	One,
	Two,
	Three
}

EDIT:-There is a built in function for doing this, I often work with the .Net CF which doesn't support it though so I nearly forgot about it. Check out the System.Enum.Parse() method.