Using default in a switch statement when switching over an enum

Question

What is your procedure when switching over an enum where every enumeration is covered by a case? Ideally you\'d like the code to be future proof, how do you do that?

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Answer 1

As an additional remark (in addition to other responses) I'd like to note that even in C++ language with its relatively strict type-safety restrictions (at least compared to C), it is possible to generate a value of enum type that in general case might not match any of the enumerators, without using any "hacks".

If you have a enum type E, you can legally do this

E e = E();

which will initialize e with zero value. This is perfectly legal in C++, even if the declaration of E does not include a enumeration constant that stands for 0.

In other words, for any enum type E, the expression E() is well-formed and generates zero value of type E, regardless of how E is defined.

Note, that this loophole allows one to create a potentially "unexpected" enum value without using any "hacks", like a cast of an int value to enum type you mentioned in your question.