🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4i8a38$2qq@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>, clamage@Eng.Sun.COM
(Steve Clamage) writes:
> It would not in fact be difficult to do, since only a table of
> strings per enum type would be needed. The information is normally
> put into debug info if you compile in debug mode anyway so the
> debugger can display the labels instead of the values. A language
> mechanism to make that data always available is probably too
> expensive a price for every program to pay in order to support
> this requirement which isn't very common and which can be solved
> easily in source code.

Well, it is not that hard for the compiler to put out the tables only if
you use the feature, so there is no need for every program to pay a penalty
for this feature.

As for "solved easily in source code", it's not nearly as easy as just
saying something like "enumvar.String()". :-)

> The more general case of non-contiguous enum values could be handled
> by a table of value/string pairs and a lookup function. The standard
> "map" class will do it all for you.

But using the map class would require initialization at runtime, wouldn't
it?  That increases the startup cost of the program.  Using a sorted array
of value/string pairs (statically initialized) and a binary search would
probably be more efficient.

-- 
Bill Leonard
Harris Computer Systems Corporation
2101 W. Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL  33309
Bill.Leonard@mail.hcsc.com

These opinions and statements are my own and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions or positions of Harris Computer Systems Corporation.

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