Re: [boost] BOOST_ENUM proposal

From: Yuval Ronen (ronen_yuval_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-12-10 10:09:07

Paul Mensonides wrote:
> I haven't really been following this conversion, but why do you need an array at
> all?  You have a sequence containing enumerator names.  You can generate a
> switch statement just as easily as you can the enum itself:
> 
> switch (v) {
>     case False:
>         return "False";
>     case True:
>         return "True";
> // etc.

I guess that's a possibility...

One point in favour of array, is that it ensures us of O(1) lookup time. 
A good compiler might do that with switch/case but I'm not sure it's 
something that we can rely on. My knowledge in these compiler 
optimization issues is definitely not that extended.

For the _VALUES version, BTW, an array won't cut it, because the numbers 
aren't nicely ordered from 0 to size - 1. It needs to a map, or a 
switch/case, and I'm not really sure which is better...

Yuval