Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rochester!rutgers!ames!amdcad!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Enum vs Define
Message-ID: <24622@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 31-Jul-87 13:34:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.24622
Posted: Fri Jul 31 13:34:40 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Aug-87 02:52:36 EDT
References: <19913@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <447@umbc3.UMD.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 60

>     No, wait stop, enough. I like C. I find it gives me lots of freedom to
> work in and I believe that it is my responsibility as a programmer to write
> readable, maintainable code. if i felt that i needed the language to do it
> for me, i would use pascal or ada. 

I'm sure lots of people feel they don't need the language to help
them out when writing code; after the first few coding errors of theirs are
caught by "lint" *before* they compile and run the program, they'll
probably change their mind.  (After having several kernel problems
turned up by "lint", I know I'm convinced.)

> 
>     Anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with an untyped language but for
> some reason must use C has my sympathies,

Anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with a *typed* language but for
some reason must use C has *my* sympathies; C *is* a typed language,
and I believe a strongly-typed one (albeit with weak type checking).

> I remember reading somewhere that there is not a 'complete' ada compiler in 
> existance because no-one can afford the disk space...this is why.

Because it has enumerated data types?  Give me a break!  First of
all, I'm not sure I believe the assertion in question, and second of
all, I don't believe that if no such compiler exists becasue "no-one
can afford the disk space", it's not just because ADA is strongly
typed!  (Consider all the features ADA has: operator overloading,
generics, etc., etc., etc..)

There *do* exist strongly-typed languages with strong type-checking
that *do* have complete compilers and that, according to at least
some of their users, make their life easier for having strong
type-checking.  Mesa is one of them.

> the team that i work on has agreed among ourselves not to use enum,

Sounds like your team is cutting off their noses to spite their
faces.  I can think of three advantages to "enum" right off the bat:

	1) Given the proper fixes to "lint", it can detect some
	   coding mistakes at compile time.

	2) Debuggers like "dbx" can print "enum"s much more
	   meaningfully than they can print "int"s whose values are
	   restricted, by convention, to a member of a set of
	   #defines.

	3) Many compilers (including most PCC-based ones) will
	   automatically choose a reasonable size for an "enum"
	   variable based on the largest and smallest numbers used to
	   represent the values of that "enum".

We use both "enum"s and "lint" here, at least in the group doing OS
development.  "lint"ing the kernel catches quite a few problems.

Strong typing isn't for weak minds; the argument "strong typing is
for weak minds" is for weak minds.
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com