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From: scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: stronger type checking of enums
Message-ID: <739@itivax.iti.org>
Date: 8 Mar 89 20:56:42 GMT
References: <25740@cornell.UUCP> <36748@bbn.COM>
Sender: news@itivax.iti.org
Reply-To: scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Lines: 25

In article <36748@bbn.COM> lpringle@labs-n.bbn.com (Lewis G. Pringle) writes:
>In article <25740@cornell.UUCP> deb@cs.cornell.edu (David Baraff) writes:
>>I'd like to make a case for stronger type checking of enum's.
>
>I agree that this would be very nice. But it does introduce some
>questions.  Array indexing.
>
>One would probably also want to be able to declare:
>	enum Color {r,g,b};
>	int	a[Color];
>[[and goes on to talk about ord() and Pascal]]

Enums as presently constructed give one a false sense of security.
Aside from such wonderful questions as strong type checking, we
have to deal with stupid issues like
	enum Color { red, green, blue, orange } ;
vs.
	enum Fruit { plum, orange, avocado, kumquat } ;

The intent of enum seems to be a primitive user-defined class --
a named type with a list of specific values which it may take.

Let's keep enum in it's present form but just tighten up the
checking.  It looks like a prime case where C++ can improve
C without breaking.