I agree with Steven, At first the thought of a standardized enum sounded great. Enums are named constants, this is something Python can already give us. Sometimes the enum values are such that they can be treated as flags. This is a property of integers. In most languages enums are integer constants, because those languages are so much closer to the machine. However Python is a runtime, and it's not Pythonic to attempt to enforce values to be constant, let require that they be integers. Furthermore, it's dangerous to suggest that this be commonplace by adding it to the standard library, when superior Pythonic alternatives exist. If you remove the constraint that enums necessarily correspond to integers, suddenly there is no point: enums for the sake of compatibility and debugging C interfaces, where not even C has that feature built in. While out of tradition, enum like values are still done with integers even in pure Python programs, it seems to me the proper approach is something like: Colors = {'red', 'blue', 'green'} color = 'red' OpenFlags = {'append', 'binary', 'exclusive', 'read', } py_open('/some/path', {'binary', 'exclusive', 'read', 'write'}) Adding enums to the standard library is going to cause a rush to rewrite everything to use enums, where perfectly good alternatives are already in use. I think it should just be accepted that C interfaces work with integers and move on. On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger@gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia has a nice survey and comparison of enums in other languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_type
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