Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!tukki!sakkinen
From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: enums
Keywords: enum subrange array index
Message-ID: <2705@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 15 Jan 90 13:46:13 GMT
References: <963@rna.UUCP> <10197@microsoft.UUCP> <9925@ardent.UUCP> <10215@microsoft.UUCP> <2205@plx.UUCP>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 40

In article <2205@plx.UUCP> johnc@plx.UUCP (John Ciccarelli) writes:
>Having used full-featured enums (and subranges -- *sigh* ) 
>in other languages, this debate about "should you be prevented from 
>assigning an int to an enum without a cast" seems like needless
>hand-wringing.  IMHO, *of course* you shouldn't be allowed to do this 
>without a cast (this is to offend some diehard original-C types I know).  

Seconded. In his "The C Book : Featuring the draft ANSI C Standard"
(Addison-Wesley 1988), Mike Banahan introduces ANSI enum types approximately:
"These belong to the category of half-baked." At the end of the section,
I think he asks any reader who invents a good application for this kind
of enumerations to inform him too. (The book is recommended especially
to people who like the wry British kind of humour.)

> [...]
>
>By 'full-featured' enums, I meant (for one thing) the ability 
>(in other languages) to declare an array with an 'enum' subscript:
>  
>  int fruitPrice[ Fruit ];
>
>This is so simple but so powerful.  In the "C++ Primer" I didn't
>see a way to do this, probably because it presupposes arrays with
>non-zero base subscripts, which I'm pretty sure C++ also lacks.
>Both features are conceptually simple but greatly improve readability 
>and robustness.  Ditto subrange types.

Perhaps you should look around for other OO languages than C++ ...
Readability and robustness aren't important goals in the C world.
By the way, Niklaus Wirth himself has eradicated enumerations,
subranges, and several other things from his newest language Oberon,
the successor of Pascal and Modula-2, which is mildly object-oriented.
I think he has overdone it.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland