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Date: Tue, 21 May 2024 23:48:47 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [Discussion] Implicitly backed enums
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From: bilge@scriptfusion.com (Bilge)

On 21/05/2024 23:35, Larry Garfield wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2024, at 5:30 PM, Bilge wrote:
>> 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
> Making enums not be "fancy strings" was a very deliberate decision.  The RFC covers that some.  There's more information in our comparison research here:
>
> https://github.com/Crell/enum-comparison
>
> And I wrote an article about enum usage a while back here:
>
> https://peakd.com/hive-168588/@crell/on-the-use-of-enums
>
> --Larry Garfield

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the resources! Whilst I can appreciate this was a deliberate 
design decision that did not come about by accident, I still didn't find 
(skimming) anything that directly answers the question:

 >What would be the downside to having all "basic" enumerations actually 
being implicitly "backed" enumerations?

I gather from your (presumably derogatory) referencing of the same as 
"fancy strings" that you would not approve such an implementation, but I 
am struggling to understand why.

Cheers,
Bilge

P.S. Sorry for the (previously) incomplete subject line.