Re: Printing Enum Variable Re: Linux World

[David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>]

Fraser Wilson wrote:
> Well, I have to disagree on this.  Printing a string representation of
> a literal is not something that goes out to the User (bless his heart).
> It's for my information, and the all caps, direct representation of the
> name is exactly what I need.

Actually, it rather annoyed me to find it in all caps. I typed into the
program with initial caps for a reason. If it's not something that goes
out to a user, why worry about it? For most my enumeration printing in
C, a couple nested "?:" did the trick. 
> 
> I understand gdb can do something similar, but debuggers are a poor
> substitute for understanding the code.
How does this help you understand the code? 
> 
> If you add an extra element to the enumeration, will the compiler
> warn you about the switch statement?  What if the strings were stored
> in an array?
Yes, if you added a default case at the end of the switch statement. The
array is a totally different issue - a valid point to complain about.
> 
> >IMO, printing enumerator literals, as is, is a quick and dirty hack that
> >should be used only if you're the only user.
> 
> Again, it's for my eyes only.  And I wouldn't call it a quick'n'dirty hack.
> It's a useful technique.
If it is just something I toss into a program and don't care how it
looks or runs, just that it does, that's what I call a quick'n'dirty
hack. YMMV
> 
> > (How should you print a value that doesn't have an
> >associated name, for instance?)
> 
> I'd completely forgotten you could do that in C.  So an enum is basically
> a shorthand to avoid writing lots of #defines?  Doesn't that somewhat miss
> the point.

No, it just means that a C enum is not quite the same abstraction as an
Ada enum. 
-- 
David Starner - OSU student - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
If you want a real optimist, look up Ray Bradbury. Guy's nuts. 
He actually likes people. -David Brin