Re: Printing Enum Variable Re: Linux World

[fraser@synopsys.com (Fraser Wilson)]

I nearly cried when dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org said:

>Note this has certain advantages over Ada's default method - it lets you
>print a good string, instead of the mangled string that went into the
>code (which, in my experiance, Ada further mangles by making it all
>upper case), and it lets you internationalize the code easily. 

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.

I understand gdb can do something similar, but debuggers are a poor
substitute for understanding 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?

>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.

> (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.

Oh, dear, the topic tree is straining ...

Fraser.