[ragnese]

Unfortunately, neither (string) enums nor string literal unions are supersets of each other when it comes to functionality. But, IMO, string-only enums are generally better.

You can't test if a given string is an element of a union without writing a custom helper and/or allocating a runtime array of the values.

On the other hand, if you don't need to test unknown strings, then union types disappear at compile time, whereas enums are compiled to real, runtime, objects.

Enums don't look like naked strings in the code. Frankly, it's just nicer on my brain to see `return Color.Red` than `return "red"` and wonder if "red" is just some random text or if it has semantic meaning. Hopefully your IDE is smart enough to take you to where "red" is defined as part of a union type when you want to see other options. Granted- the most popular editors ARE smart enough to do that, but that doesn't help when just reading code with my eyes instead of my hands, or in patches/diffs.