On Thursday 2005-10-27 16:22, Andrew Dunstan wrote: > Jim C. Nasby wrote: > >Like I said, if we're going to support a concept of ordering of items in > >an enum then we need to support it fully. For starters that means having > >the ability to re-order things in an enum seamlessly. > > I do not see this at all. An enumeration defines an ordering and a set > of labels. Why should you be able to change it? If you want a different > ordering, create a new enumeration. Let's do this right because it's a > feature worth having, not just mimic the competition's idiocy >
The symbols in the set have no _per se_ order. A collation rule is necessary to sort the symbols consistently. ASCII is an enumeration Unicode is a large enumeration with a simple naive collation and a complex default collation. Defining a set results in an unordered specification of symbols. Defining a collation produces an ordering for the set. There can be many collations for a set. An enumeration is just a computer science short-hand way to define a set and a "native" collation for the set. An enumeration's native collation need not be the only, or even the most common, collation for the enumerated set of symbols. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly