Enumerations

Basic Storm provides special syntax for enumeration types. An enumeration is a value type that contains an integer (core:Nat) that is expected to contain one out of a number of pre-defined values. An enum is defined as follows: 

enum <name> [: bitmask] {
     <element> [= <value>],
     ...
}

This defines an enumeration type named <name>, with zero or more <element>s that specify possible value. Each element will be assigned a value automatically, but it is possible to specify a value manually if desired.

If the : bitmask option is present, the enumeration is a bitmask. This means that instead of representing one out of the possible elements, it may contain a combination of zero or more of the elements.

Normal Enumerations

For non-bitmask enumerations, the value for elements are assigned from zero and upwards. Consider the following example: 

enum MyEnum {
    a, // will be 0
    b, // will be 1
    c = 10, // will be 10
    d, // will be 11
}

Each element is represented by a static member function in the enumeration that returns an instance with the appropriate value. The type does not have a default constructor, so the generated functions for the element are the preferred way to create instances of the type. For example, the element a can be accessed with the name MyEnum:a.

In addition to the elements, the type contains the following members (apart from copy- and assignment):

Bitmask Enumerations

The assignment of values to elements work differently for bitmasks. The first element is assigned the value 0x1, and subsequent values are assigned a value with the next higher bit set. For example: 

enum MyBitmask : bitmask {
    a, // will be 0x1
    b, // will be 0x2
    c = 0x10, // will be 0x10
    d, // will be 0x20
}

It is possible to set elements to values that have more than one bit set, or values that have zero bits set. These work as expected. The toS function will correctly handle values with zero bits set, and greedily finds elements that correspond to the value to provide a string representation. The generated string representation may, however, not always be minimal when elements with multiple bits set exist.

A bitmask enumeration contains the following members in addition to those in a normal enumeration: