UDAs on enum members

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 7/13/2016 4:57 AM, Tomer Filiba wrote:
> It would be really nice if I could put UDAs on enum members as well, e.g.,
>
> enum MyEnum {
>     @("SOM") SomeMember,
>     @("ANO") AnotherMemberWithAVeryLongName,
> }

Not a bad idea. It's been asked for before.


> And while we're on the subject, why can't enums have methods? At the risk of
> sounding as if I like Java (I don't :) ), it's a really nice language feature.
> Back to our example:
>
> enum MyEnum {
>     @("SOM") SomeMember,
>     @("ANO") AnotherMemberWithAVeryLongName;
>
>     string dump() {
>         ...  // `this` is a value, not a ref here
>     }
>     static MyEnum load(string name) {
>         ...
>     }
> }
>
> Basically just allow a semicolon at the end of the members, after which methods
> could appear. Adding members or whatever else Java has is an overkill -- just
> use a struct for that. But instead of lots of dumpMyEnum(MyEnum
> e)/loadMyEnum(string s) pairs, you could write myMember.dump()/MyEnum.load(s)


struct MyEnum {
     @("SOM") enum SomeMember = 0;
     @("ANO") enum AnotherMemberWithAVeryLongName = 1;

     string dump() {
         ...  // `this` is a value, not a ref here
     }
     static MyEnum load(string name) {
         ...
     }
}

Not as nice, but gets the job done. But adding a new aggregate type comes with a 
lot of baggage. I'm not convinced the complexity is worth the benefit, which 
seems minor.