Why does Clang/LLVM warn me about using default in a switch statement where all enumerated cases are covered?
- by Thomas Catterall
Consider the following enum and switch statement:
typedef enum {
MaskValueUno,
MaskValueDos
} testingMask;
void myFunction(testingMask theMask) {
switch theMask {
case MaskValueUno: {}// deal with it
case MaskValueDos: {}// deal with it
default: {} //deal with an unexpected or uninitialized value
}
};
I'm an Objective-C programmer, but I've written this in pure C for a wider audience.
Clang/LLVM 4.1 with -Weverything warns me at the default line:
Default label in switch which covers all enumeration values
Now, I can sort of see why this is there: in a perfect world, the only values entering in the argument theMask would be in the enum, so no default is necessary. But what if some hack comes along and throws an uninitialized int into my beautiful function? My function will be provided as a drop in library, and I have no control over what could go in there. Using default is a very neat way of handling this.
Why do the LLVM gods deem this behaviour unworthy of their infernal device? Should I be preceding this by an if statement to check the argument?
