[Python-Dev] Enumeration items: mixed types?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 03:50:22PM -0700, Ethan Furman wrote:
> This just doesn't make sense to me:
> 
> --> class Stuff(Enum):
> ...     blue = 1
> ...     china = 'really big country'
> ...     random = (8273.199, 517)
> 
> --> Stuff.blue.name == 'blue'
> --> Stuff.blue.value == 1
> 
> --> Stuff.china.name == 'china'
> --> Stuff.china.value == ???


Quoting the PEP:

"In the vast majority of use-cases, one doesn't care what the actual 
value of an enumeration is. But if the value is important, enumerations 
can have arbitrary values."

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0435/#id21

So in the above, Stuff.china.value == 'really big country' and 
Stuff.random.value == (8273.199, 517).

Mixing enumeration values like this would be unusual, but it will work. 
It's no different from having a list [1, 'really big country', 
(8273.199, 517)]. Lists can deal with it, but if you pass a list of 
arbitrary types to something that expects a list of ints, it will 
complain.


-- 
Steven