Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!labrea!decwrl!decvax!mcnc!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: enum type
Message-ID: <2238@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Aug-87 11:23:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2238
Posted: Sun Aug 23 11:23:36 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Aug-87 03:48:31 EDT
References: <2048@umn-cs.UUCP> <6311@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 29
Keywords: bleech!
Summary: Omit initializers from enums.

In article <6311@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <2048@umn-cs.UUCP> smiller@umn-cs.UUCP (Steven M. Miller) writes:
>>By the way does the ANSI C standard do anything new with enums? like
>>provide succ(), pred(), lower(), and upper() functions that operate
>>on enum types?
>
>No, X3J11 decided that enums have to act as integral types, so
>one can use ++ etc. on them.  If you want a general set or sequence
>data type, you'll have to develop a package that implements it.

(sorry Karl, I couldn't wait)

Looks to me like whoever added enums to C got a bit carried away when
they included intiializers.  C already had a very nice and well
#defined facility for named constants; the one created by allowing
initializers with enum is redundant, and seems (from postings running
back a month or so ago) to have created a headache for the standards
process.

Enums are a really nice idea, but as used in other languages, they
provide a facility for replacing (usually integer) values with names,
where the values _made_no_sense_, and only the fact that they could be
distinguished (and possibly had an order) was important.

C enums seem to have foundered by mixing two actually incompatible
constructs in an effort to be "cute".  Is it too late to remove this
(to me blunder) from the definition of C?

Kent, the man from xanth.