[Python-Dev] PEP 435 - requesting pronouncement

[Charles-François Natali]

I'm chiming in late, but am I the only one who's really bothered by the syntax?

class Color(Enum):
    red = 1
    green = 2
    blue = 3

I really don't see why one has to provide values, since an enum
constant *is* the value.
In many cases, there's no natural mapping between an enum constant and
a value, e.g. there's no reason why Color.red should be mapped to 1
and Color.blue to 3.

Furthermore, the PEP makes it to possible to do something like:

class Color(Enum):
    red = 1
    green = 2
    blue = 3
    red_alias = 1


which is IMO really confusing, since enum instances are supposed to be distinct.

All the languages I can think of that support explicit values (Java
being particular in the sense that it's really a full-fledge object
which can have attributes, methods, etc) make it optional by default.

Finally, I think 99% of users won't care about the assigned value
(which is just an implementation detail), so explicit value will be
just noise annoying users (well, me at least :-).

cf



2013/5/5 Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com>:
> Hello pydev,
>
> PEP 435 is ready for final review. A lot of the feedback from the last few
> weeks of discussions has been incorporated. Naturally, not everything could
> go in because some minor (mostly preference-based) issues did not reach a
> consensus. We do feel, however, that the end result is better than in the
> beginning and that Python can finally have a useful enumeration type in the
> standard library.
>
> I'm attaching the latest version of the PEP for convenience. If you've read
> previous versions, the easiest way to get acquainted with the recent changes
> is to go through the revision log at http://hg.python.org/peps
>
> A reference implementation for PEP 435 is available at
> https://bitbucket.org/stoneleaf/ref435
>
> Kind regards and happy weekend.
>
>
>
>
>
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