From: "Beman Dawes" <bdawes@acm.org>
"Thomas Witt" <witt@acm.org> wrote in message news:d595jr$2d0$1@sea.gmane.org...
There is also a nice simplicity in the current design; the functions always returns a value with one and only one flag set.
In this case the fact that it is a bitmask type seems to be kind of misleading. Isn't the whole point of a bitmask type to be able to have multiple flags set at once?
Multiple flags are or'ed together for tests:
if ( (status(p) & (directory_flag|file_flag)) != 0 ) ...
Isn't the usual way of the standard is to describe that as a "bitmask type"?
I think Thomas was looking at it from the other perspective, as was I: it only ever returns one value, so why is it a bitmask. Your example is compelling, however. BTW, if you return a UDT, you can provide both (in)equality and bitwise OR operators. The former would allow more straightforward comparisons when you are checking for just one flag. -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;