Groovy Goodness: Transform String into Enum

After reading Groovy, State of the Union - Groovy Grails eXchange 2010 by Guillaume Laforge I discovered that in Groovy 1.7.6 we can transform a String into a Enum value. We can use type coersion or the as keyword to turn a String or GString into a corresponding Enum value (if possible).

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enum Compass {     NORTH, EAST, SOUTH, WEST }   // Coersion with as keyword. def north = 'NORTH' as Compass assert north == Compass.NORTH   // Coersion by type. Compass south = 'south'.toUpperCase() assert south == Compass.SOUTH   def result = ['EA', 'WE'].collect {     // Coersion of GString to Enum.     "${it}ST" as Compass } assert result[0] == Compass.EAST assert result[1] == Compass.WEST