[Python-Dev] format, int, and IntEnum (original) (raw)

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Wed Aug 21 09:06:13 CEST 2013

On 08/20/2013 11:15 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:

On 08/14/2013 09:27 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

For enums, I believe they should be formatted like their base types (so !s and !r will show the enum name, anything without coercion will show the value) . I agree. While one of the big reasons for an Enum type was the pretty str and repr, I don't see format in that area. How often will one type in "{}".format(somevar) to find out what type of object one has? Myself, I would just type somevar.

So, these are some of the ways we have to display an object:

str() calls obj.str() repr() calls obj.repr()

"%s" calls obj.str() "%r" calls obj.repr() "%d" calls... not sure, but we see the int value

"{}".format() should (IMO) also display the value of the object

Using int as the case study, its presentation types are ['b', 'd', 'n', 'o', 'x', 'X']. Notice there is no 's' nor 'r' in there, as int expects to display a number, not arbitrary text.

So, for mixed-type Enumerations, I think any format calls should simply be forwarded to the mixed-in type (unless, of course, a custom format was specified in the new Enumeration).

-- Ethan

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list