Is there currently a way to remove or deprecate co...

# language-evolution

[Hunter]

Is there currently a way to remove or deprecate comparison for enum classes? I have an enum class that I don't want comparison operators being used on, and instead all possibilities should be listed explicitly, but I can't think of a way this can currently be done. If not, I think it would be nice to have.

[Klitos Kyriacou]

I don't think there is currently any way to disable the comparison operators at compile time (since enums are subclasses of Enum which implements Comparable). As a workaround, instead of enums you can create classes implementing a sealed interface.

[Hunter]

Yeah those just don't serialize nearly as well, which is more important in my case.

[Ruckus]

Those two things kind of go hand in hand. Enums are easy to serialize because they have a defined ordinal value, and the ordinal value also makes them comparable.

[Hunter]

No enums are serialized by name

[Ruckus]

> No enums are serialized by name
I guess they can be, but that's not a given. I generally just use the ordinal to serialize them, so I honestly didn't think about using the name instead.

[Ruckus]

> Yeah those just don't serialize nearly as well
I'm not sure what you're doing for serialization (or your overall use case for that matter), so take this with a grain of salt, but setting up a custom serializer for a sealed class is usually pretty simple and a one time cost, so if the comparability of enums is problematic, it's probably worth converting to a sealed class instead.

[ephemient]

https://pl.kotl.in/-SVv2bizg