On 2020-09-20 14:55 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> It seems kind of specialized.  You can take apart the bits with SRFI 151,
> then map ordinal->enum over them and pass that to list->enum-set.
>
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 2:35 PM Amirouche Boubekki <
> xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Does it make sense to have such a procedure that will build an
> > enum-set from an integer that is in fact the logior of several
> > ordinals?

If I understand Amirouche correctly, the idea is that we provide
some way to take an unsigned integer encoding the combination of several
enums to an enum-set, e.g.

    (bitwise-ior 1 2 4 8) -> {<enum 1>, <enum 2>, <enum 4>, <enum 8>},

with the obvious inverse operation.

This might be useful for translating between C-style "flag"
combinations and enum-sets.  There is a serious bit of awkwardness,
though, in that these integers can only encode combinations of enums
with ordinals equal to 2^n for some n.  We'd need to allow enum-types
to have "gaps" (i.e. enums for certain ordinals only), and the
conversions would be partial--enum-sets containing enums with invalid
ordinals would be rejected, as would many integers.

Amirouche, please correct me if I've misunderstood anything.

--
Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe  <xxxxxx@sigwinch.xyz>

"Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into
clerks and vice-versa." --Alan J. Perlis