How to prevent duplicate values in enum?

Unit test that checks enum and shows which particular enum values has duplicates:

[Fact]
public void MyEnumTest()
{
    var values = (MyEnum[])Enum.GetValues(typeof(MyEnum));
    var duplicateValues = values.GroupBy(x => x).Where(g => g.Count() > 1).Select(g => g.Key).ToArray();
    Assert.True(duplicateValues.Length == 0, "MyEnum has duplicate values for: " + string.Join(", ", duplicateValues));
}

This isn't prohibited by the language specification, so any conformant C# compiler should allow it. You could always adapt the Mono compiler to forbid it - but frankly it would be simpler to write a unit test to scan your assemblies for enums and enforce it that way.

Here's a simple unit test that checks it, should be a bit faster:

[TestMethod]
public void Test()
{
  var enums = (myEnum[])Enum.GetValues(typeof(myEnum));
  Assert.IsTrue(enums.Count() == enums.Distinct().Count());
}