[Python-Dev] constant/enum type in stdlib (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Sun Nov 28 14:48:08 CET 2010

On 28/11/2010 03:20, Terry Reedy wrote:

On 11/27/2010 6:26 PM, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

Can I suggest that an enum-maker be offered as a third-party module Possibly with competing versions for trial and testing ;-) rather than prematurely adding it into the standard library. I had same thought.

There are already several enum packages for Python available. The implementation by Ben Finney, associated with the previous PEP, is on PyPI and the most recent release has over 4000 downloads making it reasonably popular:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/enum/

Other contenders include flufl.enum and lazr.enum. The Twisted guys would like a named constant type, and have a ticket for it, and PyQt has its own implementation (subclassing int) providing this functionality. In terms of assessing general usefulness in the wider community that step has already been done.

This discussion came out of yet-another-set-of-integer-constants being added to the Python standard library (since changed to strings). We have integer constants, with the associated inscrutability when used from the interactive interpreter or debugging, in many standard library modules. The particular features and use cases being discussed have use within the standard library in mind.

Releasing yet-another-enum-library-that-the-standard-library-can't-use would be a particularly pointless outcome of this discussion. The decision is whether or not to use named constants in the standard library, otherwise we can just point people at one of the several existing packages.

All the best,

Michael Foord

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