Using bits and shifting enums is a pretty standard way of storing and reading flags. It’s quick, it’s compact and the syntax isn’t to difficult to pick up for people who haven’t seen it before. But since a bit is only a bit and an enum is only an enum it’s far to easy to make mistakes with these. There is no type checking when you accidentally use the wrong enum and passing an unsigned int around loses all relevance to what these ‘flags’ actually are.
So I wanted to look for a solution that not only stopped us accidentally using the wrong flag with the wrong variable (and allow the compiler to let us know if it happens) but to also to remove the loss of relevance when the flags were passed between different systems.
The Problem
Anyone who’s taken Programming 101 will know what I’m talking about.
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