Flag proposal

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 6/11/11 8:49 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:32:56 -0400, David Nadlinger <see at klickverbot.at>
> wrote:
>
>> On 6/11/11 11:20 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>> 1. Programmers following this idiom (including the Phobos devs) end up
>>> creating enums with yes and no values and are effectively identical
>>> to other
>>> enums except for their names. So, we end up with a fair bit of
>>> boilerplate
>>> code just to pass a strict boolean value.
>>
>> s/fair/tiny/, imho:
>>
>> ---
>> /// ditto.
>> enum SomeFlag { enable, disable }
>> ---
>
> A big problem with this (and enums in general), what if your flag
> function is defined inside a struct or class?
>
> struct MyStruct
> {
> /// This function ROCKS!
> void someKickAssFunction(MoreBitchin moreBitchin) {}
> /// ditto
> enum MoreBitchin { yes, no }
> }
>
> // the call, not so much.
> s.someKickAssFunction(MyStruct.MoreBitchin.yes);
>
> In other words, in order for your doc trick to work, member functions
> have to require an additional namespace to the enum.
>
> IMO, however, we need a better way to access the enum values without
> specifying the entire namespace. The difficult part is to do it in a way
> which doesn't conflict with normal symbols.
>
> Of course, such an improvement would pull the rug from this Flag
> proposal...
>
> -Steve

Thanks, Steve, this is an excellent point - as are all you made in this 
discussion (pro and con)!

Andrei