From -574318275941208497 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,7538bd92d6a9557a X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-01-16 04:06:25 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!jba.co.uk!not-for-mail From: pollardj@jba.co.uk (Jonathan de Boyne Pollard) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: short enum, bool Date: 16 Jan 1995 12:06:25 -0000 Organization: JBA Software Products, Studley, England. Lines: 42 Message-ID: <3fdng1$iti@silver.jba.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: silver.jba.co.uk X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] J Scott Peter (scotty@netcom.com) wrote: : Forgive me if this has been addressed already. Not only addressed, but at least one compiler vendor (Metaware) implements it as an extension to C++. With High C++, the default for an enum is a "short enum", where the compiler chooses the minimum width type necessary. A "long enum" always gives the enumerated type the same size as int. ( Incidentally, High C++ also has "long long", another extension, for 64-bit integers. ) : This is desirable in order to: : Save space. Which most C++ compilers default to doing anyway. : Conform to operating-system structures. Many structures used by OS : system calls contain char-or short-sized fields which have the semantics : of a bool or enum. Fortunately, the default integral promotions and the definitions for operators (such as operator! and operator&&) mean that most operations on these fields behave sensibly. : [ Suggested addition of a 'byte' modifier. ] : : This is better than using `char' to declare byte-sized integers, I think that you are trying to solve a non-problem here, simply in the name of completeness. I don't know about anyone else, but char, signed char, and unsigned char have served me well for handling byte-sized data for years, and apart from the niggles about signedness I've never really wanted more. : Furthermore, you could then distinguish between ASCII characters and : byte-sized integers. Further to my point above, there are very few (if any) practical situations where "byte-sized integers" (I think that I can guess what you mean) *need* to be distinguished from ASCII characters.