Tricks to do "enums"?

[Michael Hudson]

emile at fenx.com writes:

> Watch out for this one.  IRK, this results from auto interning some
> strings.
> 
> >>> a = "this is a longer string value"
> >>> eval("'this is a longer string value' is a")
> 0
> >>> b = "JoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoe"
> >>> eval ("'JoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoe' is b")
> 1
> 
> There's-an-assumption-at-the-bottom-of-this-I-assume-ly y'rs,

Look at Python/compile.c, line 261 (or search for "Intern selected
string constants").  Basically string constants that *could* be Python
identifiers (ie. consist entirely of A-Za-z0-9_) are interned.

I think this is the third (or fourth?) time I have posted this bit of
information to this newsgroup...

Cheers,
Michael

-- 
81. In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living
    definition of the word "frustration".
     -- Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/~perlis-alan/quotes.html