Re: enumeration literal/internal codes query

[bbadger@x102c.uucp (Badger BA 64810)]

In article <1074@shuksan.UUCP> scott@shuksan.UUCP (Scott Moody) writes:
>I too have run into all of the same problems that you have mentioned. The 'pos
>doesn't work which leaves the Unchecked Conversion method. I would also
>think that the language should provide some better (cleaner) method
>of retrieving that value; especially since the language provides a
>clean method of describing those values (using rep specs).

I've been wondering why you *want* to access the ``internal'' representation.
The standard use for representation clauses on enumeration types is to ``hide''
a specific encoding so that you *don't* have to deal with the ``ugly'' numeric
representation directly.  

The only thing I've thought of is to use it as an ``external representation''
to be written to a file.  Normally, of course, you would just instantiate 
SEQUENTIAL_IO on the enumeration type, or on a record type with a component
of the enumeration type.  But in that case, you don't really ``see'' the 
representation in the program, it only appears in the file.

So, please give an example of how accessing the representation would be useful.


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