From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:19:58 MST."
	<a55104d5a009d762eeb15be25d31a7e8@yyc.orthanc.ca>
References: <a55104d5a009d762eeb15be25d31a7e8@yyc.orthanc.ca>
From: Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>
Date: Sun,  7 Feb 2010 15:16:02 -0800
Message-Id: <20100207231603.279A35B23@mail.bitblocks.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] NaN, +Inf, and -Inf, constants?
Topicbox-Message-UUID: d02a0270-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:19:58 MST "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)" <lyndon@orthanc.ca>  wrote:
> > i suspect the rationale was that, finally, C provided a way
> > outside the preprocessor to give symbolic names to constants.
> > why restrict that to int?
>
> Because enum's have been int's since their inception?
>
> I'm sympathetic to the underlying need, but making a fundamental
> type of the language suddenly become variable does not seem to
> be the right way of going about this.
>
> E.g., what is the type of:
>
> enum {
> 	a = 1,
> 	b = 2.44000000000000000000618549L,
> 	c = 2.44F,
> 	d = "this is weird",
> 	e = 1LL<<62,
> } foo;

The cleanest solution would be to treat C's _static const_
"variables" as as compile time constants. I wish the standard
dictated this.