🚀 go-pugleaf

"W. Dicks" <wd@isis.co.za> shared the following on 13 Mar 96 07:31:13 GMT:

>The system that I'm working often needs to know the string 
>value of an enum. e.g. enum week{MON=1, ..., SUN} it; it = 
>TUE;
>Then when this enum is passed as a parameter the function 
>should return the string based on the enum. For instance, 
>weekImage(it) will return "TUE". Is it not possible that such 
>a functionality can be built into enums?

What you are essentially asking for is language support for converting
a label into a string respresentation of its name.  That is a very
unusual feature to find in any language, since it would require the
compiler to place the symbolic dictionary in the executable file.  I
don't think there's a snowball's chance of this getting into C++.

Since enum is by definition an integral type, why not assign values to your
enumerators that can be used as indexes into a string?:

 enum week {MON=0,TUE=4,WED=8,THU=12,FRI=16,SAT=20,SUN=24};
 const char * days = "MON\0TUE\0WED\0THU\0FRI\0SAT\0SUN";

 char const * weekImage(week day) = days[day];



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 Mike McCormick // mtm4@rsvl.unisys.com // m.mccormick2@genie.com
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