[Python-Dev] PEP 435 -- Adding an Enum type to the Python standard library (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Apr 27 19:35:43 CEST 2013


On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

While this will certainly work, it means you can't have class variables that happen to be the same type as the enum -- so no int in an IntEnum, for example.

The solution I like best is the helper class (called, originally enough, enum), and only those items get transformed: class Planet(IntEnum): MERCURY = enum(1) VENUS = enum(2) EARTH = enum(3) roughpi = 3 # not transformed

If this means that the most plain vanilla enum definition still has to use the enum(i) notation, I'm against it. Why do you want rough_pi to be a class variable anyway? The whole point of an enum is that it's not a kitchen sink class. An enum for the planets will need other support code that doesn't live in the enum class -- it shouldn't be considered a general scope for miscellanea. (TBH, I think that using classes to scope variables is mostly misguided anyway -- the standard mechanism for scoping is the module.)

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



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