Re: How to elegantly get the enum code from its string type

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:46:38 +0200
Message-ID:
<hq1i2i$7ra$1@news.eternal-september.org>
* thomas:

Hi guys,

      I got a problem in practice, and I cannot find a verly elegant
solution to it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
enum Type{
       REPLY = 100,
       REP = 1052,
       HAHA = 9523,
};


Don't use all uppercase for the identifiers (this advice is in most serious
FAQs, including this group's FAQ and Bjarne's mini-FAQ).

Reserve all uppercase for macros, to minimize macro name collisions.

Also, a comma after the last item is accepted by some compilers but relative to
C++98 is a non-standard language extension, so if you desire portability, don't.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I open the interface to users for configuration, I would like the
user to use "REPLY", "REP", "HAHA" like string format because it's
much easier to recognize and remember.


Yep.

But in my program, I need to use the actual code (integral format).

My solution is to define a map<string, int>, and insert the string and
integral format pairs into the map for query.


Use a map<string, Type>.

But it's really anoying
and difficult to use, especially when initializing.


Huh?

Is there any elegant solution to this problem?


<code>
#include <string>
#include <stdexcept>
#include <stddef.h>

typedef ptrdiff_t Size;

template< typename T, Size N >
Size size( T (&)[N] ) { return N; }

enum SomeEnum { reply = 100, rep = 1052, haha = 9523 };

SomeEnum someEnumFrom( std::string const& name )
{
     typedef std::pair< char const*, SomeEnum > Pair;
     static Pair const values[] =
     {
         Pair( "reply", reply ), Pair( "rep", rep ), Pair( "haha", haha )
     };

     for( int i = 0; i < size( values ); ++i )
     {
         if( values[i].first == name ) { return values[i].second; }
     }
     throw std::runtime_error( "someEnumFrom: no such name" );
}

#include <iostream>
int main()
{
     SomeEnum const e = someEnumFrom( "haha" );
     std::cout << e << std::endl;
}
</code>

Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

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