Sort enum values, please

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Tomek Sowiñski" <just at ask.me> wrote in message 
news:hek1nv$2d67$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Quick one: could the compiler enforce that enum values in order of 
> appearance are sorted?
>
> It could neatly guarantee no surprises with case ranges, like this one:
>
> enum Weird { One=1, Two=4, Three=3 }
>
> Now, case Weird.One: .. case Weird.Three: won't match Weird.Two.
>
> I'd agree that you don't see enums like Weird often. Then again, why rely 
> on a coding convention? This guarantee looks cheap to implement.
>
> Any reason against?
>
> Tomek

That could be a problem for this sort of scenario:

A library starts out, in its initial prototype version with something like 
this:

enum Actions
{
  Jump = 1,
  Eat = 2
}

Then in a later version a new feature is added:

enum Actions
{
  Jump = 1,
  Eat = 2,
  Drink = 3
}

Then in each new verison more stuff gets added, over and over until it's 
like this:

enum Actions
{
  Jump = 1,
  Eat = 2,
  Drink = 3,
  Run = 4,
  Throw = 5,
  Worry = 6,
  Pout = 7,
  Jog = 8,
  Talk = 9
}

Now it's become a mess, and needs to be organized, but at this point the 
library has gained enough widespread use that redoing the numbering would 
break a lot of code in non-obvious ways. There are plenty of ways to handle 
it, but it's nice to be able to just simply do this:

enum Actions
{
  // Athletic
  Jog = 8,
  Jump = 1,
  Run = 4,
  Throw = 5,

  // Nutritional
  Drink = 3,
  Eat = 2,

  // Social/Psychological
  Pout = 7,
  Talk = 9,
  Worry = 6
}