Enumeration representation

Note

Enumeration representation attributes are supported by

  • GNAT Community Edition 2019

  • GCC 9

Enumeration types in Ada are represented as integers at the machine level. But there are actually two mappings from enumeration to integer: a literal position and a representation value.

Literal positions

Each enumeration literal has a corresponding position in the type declaration. We can easily obtain it from the Type'Pos (Enum) attribute.

    
    
        
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO;

procedure Main is
begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Pos(False) =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (Boolean'Pos (False));
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Pos(True)  =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (Boolean'Pos (True));
end Main;

For the reverse mapping, we use Type'Val (Int):

    
    
        
with Ada.Text_IO;

procedure Main is
begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (Boolean'Val (0)'Image);
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (Boolean'Val (1)'Image);
end Main;

Representation values

The representation value defines the internal code, used to store enumeration values in memory or CPU registers. By default, enumeration representation values are the same as the corresponding literal positions, but you can redefine them. Here, we created a copy of Boolean type and assigned it a custom representation.

In Ada 2022, we can get an integer value of the representation with Type'Enum_Rep(Enum) attribute:

    
    
        
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO;

procedure Main is
   type My_Boolean is new Boolean;
   for My_Boolean use (False => 3, True => 6);
begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Enum_Rep(False) =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (My_Boolean'Enum_Rep (False));
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Enum_Rep(True)  =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (My_Boolean'Enum_Rep (True));
end Main;

And, for the reverse mapping, we can use Type'Enum_Val (Int):

    
    
        
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO;

procedure Main is
   type My_Boolean is new Boolean;
   for My_Boolean use (False => 3, True => 6);
begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (My_Boolean'Enum_Val (3)'Image);
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (My_Boolean'Enum_Val (6)'Image);

   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Pos(False) =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (My_Boolean'Pos (False));
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("Pos(True)  =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (My_Boolean'Pos (True));
end Main;

Note that the 'Val(X)/'Pos(X) behaviour still is the same.

Custom representations can be useful for integration with a low level protocol or hardware.

Before Ada 2022

This doesn't initially look like an important feature, but let's see how we'd do the equivalent with Ada 2012 and earlier versions. First, we need an integer type of matching size, then we instantiate Ada.Unchecked_Conversion. Next, we call To_Int/From_Int to work with representation values. And finally an extra type conversion is needed:

    
    
        
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO;
with Ada.Unchecked_Conversion;

procedure Main is

   type My_Boolean is new Boolean;
   for My_Boolean use (False => 3, True => 6);
   type My_Boolean_Int is range 3 .. 6;
   for My_Boolean_Int'Size use My_Boolean'Size;

   function To_Int is new Ada.Unchecked_Conversion
     (My_Boolean, My_Boolean_Int);

   function From_Int is new Ada.Unchecked_Conversion
     (My_Boolean_Int, My_Boolean);

begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("To_Int(False) =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (Integer (To_Int (False)));
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("To_Int(True)  =");
   Ada.Integer_Text_IO.Put (Integer (To_Int (True)));
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("From_Int (3)  =");
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (From_Int (3)'Image);
   Ada.Text_IO.New_Line;
   Ada.Text_IO.Put ("From_Int (6)  =");
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line (From_Int (6)'Image);
end Main;

Even with all that, this solution doesn't work for generic formal type (because T'Size must be a static value)!

We should note that these new attributes may already be familiar to GNAT users because they've been in the GNAT compiler for many years.

References