Feature complete and ergonomic enums in C

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

C and C++ were known for some time has having particularly underfeatured enumerations. Given the follow very temporary definition which will immediately breakdown when c so much as looks at it,

An ENUM: A set of discrete named values, and a type who’s stored value can be exactly one of those from the associated set.

It would also be nice for an enum type to be:

Printable: We can trivially get a printable string from any value of the enum.
Iterable: We can iterate through the values in the set represented by the enum.
Indexable: If there’s data associated with the various enum values, we can use the enum to refer to, or look up, the piece of data associated with one of it’s values.
Closed: We have some sort of facilities or language features to prevent values of enum type from being assigned arbitrary numeric values that have no meaning in the enum.
Usable as Sentinel: A value of enum type can be used to indicate which procedure or data should be used.

But wait! We can’t begin talking about sentinels without addressing the ginormous …

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Feature complete and ergonomic enums in C