On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Andrew Barnert <abarnert@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Mar 12, 2013, at 8:36, Eli Bendersky <eliben@gmail.com> wrote:

> It is actually better, because it emphasizes that NamedInt is just that, not a kind of Enum. There's just one enum. Moreover, I'm not sure why strings need to be named (they name themselves just fine). And moreover+, Bitmask IMHO is completely unnecessary in Python.

It's necessary everywhere we interface with C APIs and binary formats that use them. Even the stdlib is full of candidates--the flags in os, stat, etc. are all bitmasks.

I think that viewing the Python programmer community at large, very few actually interact with C APIs that have bitmasked flags. Moreover, a NamedInt can fit the bill without needing a specific bitmask flag.

If you have "names" for your flag constituents you can just join them with '|' as in C. This is similar to what's currently being done in modules like os and stat, but provides conveniently printable names for the magic numbers. The benefits of a specific bitmasking class in the stdlib are imho very marginal.

Eli