Should all enums be immutable?

[Stewart Gordon]

On 04/04/2011 10:32, Don wrote:
<snip>
> Yes. The ONLY reason those manifest constants exist at all, is so that they don't exist at
> run time. They have no address. Any case where taking a reference to them works, is a
> compiler bug.
<snip>

Eh what?  In the case of simple value-type constants, this makes sense.  But when they're 
reference types, many copies exist at run time, rather than only one.  This is certainly 
not an advantage on any level.

A reasonable way of doing it is such that every instance of the same enum value has the 
same bit pattern.  For pure value types (primitive types, static arrays and structs/unions 
consisting only of pure value types) this is straightforward.  If a reference type is 
involved, put the contents in the static data segment and have the enum value referencing 
this one instance.  I presume this can be done...?

Stewart.