enums

[Karl Heuer]

In <2404 at boulder.Colorado.EDU> swarbric at tramp (Frank Swarbrick) writes:
>In <11686 at steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen at crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>[enums should be in sequence, so ++ and -- can be used meaningfully]
>
>Personally, I would like it to be even a little more like Pascal.  [++ on the
>last item should wrap to the first.]  This is like Pascal's succ() and pred()

I rather doubt that this is true of Pascal -- I've never heard of it before --
but I don't claim to be a Pascal expert, and anyway it doesn't affect my
reply.  I *don't* think it should be true of C, because it violates the
principle of keeping the primitives simple.  Most applications don't need the
wraparound behavior, and it does have a nontrivial cost, therefore the ++
operator should simply step by one (with undefined behavior if you step off
the end).

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl at haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint