enum

[Eric Beyeler]

I ran into an interesting characteristic of enums... why is comparison
between different types allowed? assignment is not allowed ( which I
would expect )

enum TESTA
{
TestA1=4,
TestA2=5,
};

enum TESTB
{
TestB1=7,
TestB2=8,
};

int main()
{
TESTA a;
a = TestA2;
TESTB b;
b = TestB2;
//a = TestB2; // not allowed
if (a == b) // why is this legal?
{
}
if ( a == TestB2 ) // why is this legal?
{
}
}

Eric B

[Ivan Vecerina]

"Eric Beyeler" <eb********@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8c*************************@posting.google.co m...
| I ran into an interesting characteristic of enums... why is comparison
| between different types allowed? assignment is not allowed ( which I
| would expect )

For historical reasons, enums are implicitly converted to an
integral value whenever needed. And there always is an
integral value to represent any enum value.
So when you compare two enum values, they are both converted
to an integer.

However, assignment of an int to an enum variable leads
to undefined behavior if the enum is not large enough
to store the integral value.
For example:

| enum TESTA
| {
| TestA1=4,
| TestA2=5,
| };

void f(int i)
{
TESTA e = i; // what if i is out of range?
}

So, allowing the assignment of any integer, without casting,
to a variable of enum type, would be worse than the opposite.

This said, the compiler will not complain if you try to
assign a 'long' to a 'short', so things aren't too consistent
here either ...
Regards,
Ivan
--
http://ivan.vecerina.com