[Python-Dev] cpython: simplify and rewrite the zipimport part of 702009f3c0b1 a bit (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Tue May 29 04:45:23 CEST 2012

On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 2:07 AM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:

On 05/25/2012 10:14 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote: On Fri, 25 May 2012 18:57:57 +0200 Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote: This is probably minor, but wouldn't it make more sense to have those constants uppercased? At least that's the general style we have in the codebase for enum values. +1, this surprised me too.

FWIW I contributed the utime enum with the lowercase values.  I don't uppercase enum values as a rule. Uppercasing preprocessor macros is a good idea because they're not safe. There are loads of ways they can produce unexpected behavior.  So if something funny is going on, and the code involves some preprocessor slight-of-hand, those identifiers pop out at you and you know to double-check them.  But enum values are as safe as houses.  I think of them as equivalent to const ints, which I also don't uppercase.  There's no need to draw attention to them. There's nothing in PEP 7 either way about enum nomenclature.  But Benjamin has already uppercased these (and some other) enums, so I suppose the community has spoken.

I think the convention is that constants are uppercased -- enums are definitely constants. It helps the reader quickly to see what is variable and what is constant in an expression -- when I see x == 42, I know which is which, but when I see x == y, I don't. If I see x == Y, I know.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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