Guido van Rossum wrote:
class color(enum): RED = value() WHITE = value() BLUE = value()
We could do somewhat better than that: class Color(Enum): RED, WHITE, BLUE = range(3) However, it's still slightly annoying that you have to specify how many values there are in the range() call. It would be even nicer it we could just use an infinite iterator, such as class Color(Enum): RED, WHITE, BLUE = values() However, the problem here is that the unpacking bytecode anally insists on the iterator providing *exactly* the right number of items, and there is no way for values() to know when to stop producing items. So, suppose we use a slightly extended version of the iterator protocol for unpacking purposes. If the object being unpacked has an __endunpack__ method, we call it after unpacking the last value, and it is responsible for doing appopriate checking and raising an exception if necessary. Otherwise we do as we do now. The values() object can then have an __endunpack__ method that does nothing, allowing you to unpack any number of items from it. -- Greg