[Tutor] What would be good use cases for the enum module?

[Alan Gauld]

On 09/04/17 04:00, boB Stepp wrote:

> understandable to me, but I am having difficulty imagining where I
> might want to use these features.
> 

Steven has given the basics, here are a few more real world examples:

Any kind of status value:
(open,closed,opening, closing,locked)  - control valve
(on, off) - light
(red,green,amber,red-amber) - uk traffic light

small collections:
days of week
months in year
(cleaning, reception, waiting, valet) - rota duties
(hourly,daily,weekly,monthly,annual) - schedules

Enums are very common in larger programs once you get
used to the concept. It's a bit like dictionaries: many
traditional programmers think of everything as arrays
and can't initially think of when they would use a dictionary
(arbitrary key rather than numeric index) But once you
get started you find dictionaries are at least as useful
as arrays..

And, surprise, surprise, there is a link. Very often
enums form the set of valid keys to a dictionary...

-- 
Alan G
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