Programming Language for Old Timers

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Enumeration Types

Traditionally Lisp-like languages have just used symbols (simple-names in PLOT) to represent enumeration types. However, if you wanted to define enumeration types with type checking, you could easily add support for Java-style enumeration types using macros.

This would allow writing code like:

defenum color
  red
  blue
  green

defenum fancy-color is color
  pink
  turqoise
  teal

defun f(c is color) ....

defun f(i is integer) f(fancy-color(i))

The following macro is sufficient:

defmacro defenum ?classname is name [ ?=is ?superclassname is name ]
                 { ^ ?choice is name }+ =>
  def choices-name = name(classname + "-values", classname)
  def constructor = name("%make-" + classname, classname)
  def indices = range(0, length(choice) - 1)
  def classdef = if superclassname
                    `defclass ?classname constructor: ?constructor(name, index)
                                         is ?superclassname(name, index)`
                  else
                    `defclass ?classname constructor: ?constructor(name, index)
                       name is name = name
                       index is integer = index`
  `do
     ?classdef
     { def ?choice = ?constructor(#?choice, ?indices) & ^ }*
     def ?choices-name = list( { ?choice &, }* )
     def ?classname(index is integer)
       ?choices-name[index]`

This might be done a little differently if PLOT supported metaclasses. The list of enumeration values might be kept in a slot of the class instead of in a separate definition with a conventional name suffixed with "-values".

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