Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:123388
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary="------------3VL3kuViopNqNbs8XhXPIxaV"
Message-ID: <fcb90d5b-ac31-49b5-bf72-ed8654c34053@scriptfusion.com>
Date: Tue, 21 May 2024 23:30:23 +0100
Precedence: bulk
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Content-Language: en-GB
Subject: [PHP-DEV] [Discussion]
To: internals@lists.php.net
From: bilge@scriptfusion.com (Bilge)

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------3VL3kuViopNqNbs8XhXPIxaV
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi Internals,

I struggle to understand the benefit of "basic" enumerations and their 
diminished API. In particular, I often find myself wanting to use 
|from()/||tryFrom()| to convert a string to an enumeration. To do this, 
I must convert it to a "backed" enum and copy & paste each name to its 
value. In all other regards, I still want it to behave like a "basic" 
enumeration, so I won't abuse the value of the names to act like a 
mapping; the values will always mirror the names, and if I need to do 
any mappings, I'll add match() functions.

My question, then, is why can't basic enumerations have these semantics 
by default? Or, to state it more concretely, what would be the downside 
to having all "basic" enumerations actually being "backed" enumerations 
whose values implicitly mirror their names for the purposes of 
converting to/from strings? Would this not make basic enumeration more 
useful without any particular downsides?

Kind regards,
Bilge

--------------3VL3kuViopNqNbs8XhXPIxaV
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Hi Internals,</p>
    <p>I struggle to understand the benefit of "basic" enumerations and
      their diminished API. In particular, I often find myself wanting
      to use <code>from()/</code><code>tryFrom()</code> to convert a
      string to an enumeration. To do this, I must convert it to a
      "backed" enum and copy &amp; paste each name to its value. In all
      other regards, I still want it to behave like a "basic"
      enumeration, so I won't abuse the value of the names to act like a
      mapping; the values will always mirror the names, and if I need to
      do any mappings, I'll add match() functions.</p>
    <p>My question, then, is why can't basic enumerations have these
      semantics by default? Or, to state it more concretely, what would
      be the downside to having all "basic" enumerations actually being
      "backed" enumerations whose values implicitly mirror their names
      for the purposes of converting to/from strings? Would this not
      make basic enumeration more useful without any particular
      downsides?</p>
    <p>Kind regards,<br>
      Bilge<br>
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

--------------3VL3kuViopNqNbs8XhXPIxaV--