I didn't know that C and C++ allow multicharacter literal
: not 'c' (of type int in C and char in C++), but 'tralivali' (of type int!)
enum
{
ActionLeft = 'left',
ActionRight = 'right',
ActionForward = 'forward',
ActionBackward = 'backward'
};
Standard says:
C99 6.4.4.4p10: "The value of an integer character constant containing more than one character (e.g., 'ab'), or containing a character or escape sequence that does not map to a single-byte execution character, is implementation-defined."
I found they are widely used in C4 engine. But I suppose they are not safe when we are talking about platform-independend serialization. Thay can be confusing also because look like strings. So what is multicharacter literal's scope of usage, are they useful for something? Are they in C++ just for compatibility with C code? Are they considered to be a bad feature as goto operator or not?
It makes it easier to pick out values in a memory dump.
Example:
enum state { waiting, running, stopped };
vs.
enum state { waiting = 'wait', running = 'run.', stopped = 'stop' };
a memory dump after the following statement:
s = stopped;
might look like:
00 00 00 02 . . . .
in the first case, vs:
73 74 6F 70 s t o p
using multicharacter literals. (of course whether it says 'stop' or 'pots' depends on byte ordering)