Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: enum - enum ?
Message-ID: <516@haddock.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Jun-87 19:29:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: haddock.516
Posted: Fri Jun  5 19:29:30 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 09:58:06 EDT
References: <139@starfire.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ISC.COM.UUCP (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 23

In article <139@starfire.UUCP> merlyn@starfire.UUCP (Brian Westley) writes:
>What does the current standard say about enum - enum (both same enum type)?

It says that enums are just ints.

Personally, I think I'd be happy to have both enums and chars behave like
pointers arithmetically (e.g.  char+int == char, enum-enum == int, other
combinations illegal), provided there's also a type "byte" ("short short"?)
for arithmetic usage.

>I know (int) green - (int) red will always work, but it's ugly.
>If enums are too strongly typed (what is this, Pascal?) people will
>go back to lists of #defines.

But if enums are too weakly typed, what's their advantage over ints?

I tend to use enums only when they would be legal in the strictest compilers,
i.e. when the actual values are completely arbitrary.  Given the suggested
"pointer-like" semantics for arithmetic, and the ability to declare an array
indexed by enums (or other types!), I could find more use for them.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
int hue[enum color] = { RED: 0x00F, GREEN: 0x0F0, BLUE: 0xF00 }; /* I wish */