[Python-Dev] PEP 435 -- Adding an Enum type to the Python standard library

[Larry Hastings]

On 04/26/2013 12:34 AM, Greg Ewing wrote:
> Or if, as Guido says, the only sensible things to use
> as enum values are ints and strings, just leave anything
> alone that isn't one of those.

The standard Java documentation on enums:

    http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/enum.html

has an example enum of a "Planet", a small record type containing mass 
and radius--each of which are floats.  I don't know whether or not it 
constitutes good programming, but I'd be crestfallen if Java enums were 
more expressive than Python enums ;-)

FWIW I'm +0.5 on "the enum metaclass ignores callables and 
descriptors".  This seems reasonably Pythonic, much more so than "ignore 
everything except ints and strings".  And as long as we're 
special-casing it I think we should opt for flexibility. Certainly I see 
nothing wrong with enums of float, complex, Decimal, and Fraction, so I 
don't see a good place to draw the line with a whitelist.


//arry/
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