Enumerated types... what's the point?

[Richard Stead]

In article <2308 at plx.UUCP>, evan at plx.UUCP (Evan Bigall) writes:
> I hate to do this, but this is what emacs is all about.
> [some lisp and religious ravings deleted...]
> The ability to count and do relative numeric edits is my test to anybody that
> trys to espouse any other editor.

O gimme a break!
FLAME ON!
I see ADA wars has just about packed up and left this group and you want
EMACS wars.  Is this comp.lang.c or alt.misc?  You want numbers?  How about a
vi macro that does exactly what your emacs macro does:
:map I /[0-9]^[ix^[lma/[^0-9]^[?[0-9]^[a+1^Mx^[`ai^M^[!!bc^[J2xkJh2x
Satisfied?
Flame off.
The point that was being addressed is that lots of #defines can be gross and
hard to maintain, setting up an emacs macro to address part of the maintainance
problem is not an answer.  One of the points of C is portability.  Are you
going to require everyone who wants to maintain your code learn both emacs
and lisp and use all your personal macros for that?  Bye bye portability.
So we're back to enums, a more portable solution for improved maintainability.

Richard Stead
stead at seismo.css.gov