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Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 09:26:28 +0200
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Subject: RFC: Enum
From: dhaarbrink@gmail.com (Dennis Haarbrink)

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One thing I would really like to see in 5.4 is enums.
There is already an RFC for that: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/enum

This was discussed in february this year, but no consensus was reached.
IIRC, the most notable problems were:
- What is the 'value' of enum constant: string or int, user defined scalar,
defaults
- Ability to make enums more 'class like', some people wanted to be able to
add methods.

Another thing which was discussed (and I think most people agreed on that),
but is not in the RFC: type hinting in method signatures.


I think we should keep this simple proposal simple, let it be an enum in all
its simplicity.
The toughest part would be to decide what would be the default value. Some
proposed to use the name of the constant, which is imho best for
debuggability (i like this one the best), or an auto incrementing int,
saying that it is better performance wise and which is more analog with
mysql's enum type.


So, to sum up:
- Do we really need enum level methods?
- Need to reach consensus on default values (strings vs auto inc. ints)
- RFC needs to be updated, explaining the type hinting of enums in method
signatures



Regards,
Dennis Haarbrink

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