[Python-ideas] PEP for enum library type?

[Jonathan Slenders]

Just quickly thinking a little out of the box.

Suppose, that we added grammar for scheme-like symbols. (You know, these
atomic identifiers, prefixed with a quote. I don't know much about scheme,
but as I understand, they are just constants.)

In Python, the syntax could be similar, we could simply do in a global
module scope:

sym symbol

which would translate to:

locals()['symbol'] = Symbol('symbol')

Where Symbol is a built-in that cannot change, which doesn't have a
content, except for its name, and never equals anything but itself. From
then on, we can access it through the name-binding 'symbol'

Then we could probably create enums, using the classes as we have:

class Colors:
    sym red
    sym green
    sym blue

There are probably some gaps here in my reasoning, but this could also work.

Cheers,
Jonathan



2013/2/12 Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney at gmail.com>

> On 13 February 2013 09:29, Jonathan Slenders <jonathan at slenders.be> wrote:
>
>> Is a new enum keyword still a possibility? To me that seems to be the
>>
>>> cleanest way.
>>
>>
>> I was just thinking the same. We don't like to have more syntax than
>> necessary, but we should also not introduce too much magic...
>>
>
> That's my conclusion as well. To get a nice* enum with guaranteed
> semantics and no edge cases, I think it needs parser support.
>
> * for my definition of "nice".
>
> Tim Delaney
>
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