Implicit enum conversions are a stupid PITA

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:hogavk$2ll7$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> Good point. As I recall, we expended an enormous amount of effort working 
> on template syntax, and I certainly feel that
>
>     octal!"177"
>
> is far better than, say:
>
>     octal<"177">.value
>
> but when I compare it to
>
>     0177
>
> that's just hard to beat. A customized syntax is always going to be better 
> than a generic one.

I agree that "A customized syntax is always going to be better than a 
generic one", all else being equal (hence my distaste for the enum-related 
mixin stuff in other branches of this thread).

But I still very much fail to see how anyone can consider being able to 
change a number's value simply by adding (or removing) a leading zero to be 
anywhere remotely near "hard to beat". Though I suppose we've already tread 
this ground 64 times before (oops, I mean "a hundred").