[Python-ideas] adopt an enum type for the standard library?

23 Jan 2008

      AFAIK if you want enumerations you must either create your own, or use a
third party module, or use namedtuple:

    Files = collections.namedtuple("Files", "minimum maximum")(1, 200)
    ...
    x = Files.minimum

Using:

    MINIMUM, MAXIMUM = 1, 200

is often inconvenient, since you might have several different ones. Of
course you could do:

    MIN_FILES = 1
    MIN_DIRS = 0

Personally, I like enums and consider them to be a fundamental, but I
don't like the above approaches.

There is an enum module in PyPI 
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/enum/
and there are several versions in the Python Cookbook.

Wouldn't one of these be worth adopting for the standard library?

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd., www.qtrac.eu