The Standard / Re: Problems With Typechecking Enumerated Types

Clay Phipps phipps at fortune.UUCP
Thu Jul 12 10:34:50 AEST 1984


[Beware the jabberwock !]

    These results show the inconsistency in type checking enums - some 
    bizzare operations are allowed without any warning (like enum * enum)
    and some reasonable operations are not allowed (like array indexing).
    Has a standard been developed for what operations should and should not
    be allowed on enums?

Sure it has: ANSI/IEEE 770X3.97-1983: "Programming Language Pascal".  :-)

Quick !  Get me that asbestos suit !  

Don't know why it was (as Ritchie The Revered reportedly said) "a botch"
in C, except that it was such a late addition to the language,
and may have violated some fundamental simplifying assumptions
about how things were done.

-- Clay Phipps
   
   soon to be flamed to a crisp at ...
-- 
            { amd  hplabs!hpda  sri-unix  ucbvax!amd }          
                                                      !fortune!phipps
   { ihnp4  cbosgd  decvax!decwrl!amd  harpo  allegra}



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