Zack Weinberg wrote:
Mark Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[snip stuff addressed elsewhere]
I agree with the goal of more hiding.
You can do this in C by using an incomplete structure type in most
places, and then, in the files where you want the definition visible,
defining the structure to have a single field of the enumerated
type. That is a little messy, but it is C++-compatible. (In fact, in
ISO C++, without the additions presently in the WP, you can't do
better; forward declarations of enums are still not allowed.)
Doesn't work, at least not as a drop-in replacement; you can't pass an
incomplete structure by value. We do do this in places where there's
a real structure that can be passed around by pointer...
Good point; yes, you would have to pass a pointer. I guess you could
create a singleton representative of each value in the enum, and pass
them around, but I agree that's getting pretty ugly. Of course, the
problem with "unsigned int" is that it is a complete type, and people
can accidentally pass in "7", even if there's no such enumeral. You
really want forward-declared enums, but you haven't got them; it may be
you just lose. :-(
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(916) 791-8304
