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From: karl@haddock.UUCP (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: enum - enum ?
Message-ID: <525@haddock.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jun-87 10:02:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: haddock.525
Posted: Tue Jun  9 10:02:22 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jun-87 03:30:19 EDT
References: <139@starfire.UUCP> <516@haddock.UUCP> <20540@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ISC.COM.UUCP (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 18

In article <20540@sun.uucp> guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>[haddock!karl (Karl Heuer) writes:]
>>But if enums are too weakly typed, what's their advantage over ints?
>
>I hope certain legal but dubious uses of "enum"s will at least generate
>warnings even from X3J11-conforming compilers; for example, coercing
>something of type "enum foo" to something of type "enum bar".  This
>might not be as good at catching errors as forbidding those uses, but
>at least it means that the use wouldn't pass without comment.

Perhaps you're right; the May86 dpANS lists under Common Warnings: "A value is
given to an object of an enumeration type other than by assignment of an
enumeration constant that is a member of that type."  (Which seems unusually
strict, as it would produce a warning for some perfectly valid code written
under the "strong enum" model.)  If this or similar wording appears in the
final Draft, I expect people will continue to use enum as they do now.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint