where I don't really care what the specific order is, just that the ordinal values are unique... Anyone have a bright idea on how to accomplish this? Preprocessor?
Yes, the preprocessor can be used. VC++ has a __COUNTER__ extension. Also there is BOOST_PP_COUNTER/BOOST_PP_UPDATE_COUNTER()(introduced in 1.34).
One problem -- if this used in different headers, the generated numbers depend on the order of includes, which potentially can lead to the ODR violation :-(
Sigh. This seems like something that ought to get language support...
I once thought that the problem may be solved by compile-time GUID, but for me four numbers instead of one didn't work... but if you want _anything_ less_than_comparable, this might be an option.
I'm not familiar with compile-time GUIDs - where is this discussed? Matthias