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Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:56:47 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Let's discuss enums!
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 18/09/2015 00:16, Marcio Almada wrote:
> A kitten is working on thathttps://wiki.php.net/rfc/enum. Many points
> on the linked RFC are compatible to the points you raised so it might
> be worth reading before even starting any new proposal.

Aha, I hadn't seen that, should have thought to search the wiki. Still, 
interesting that we seems to mostly agree on the key decisions, although 
I've gone into more detail about things that he's left as Future Scope, 
which is fair enough.

The main thing I'd change if I was writing it is the implicit "ordinal" 
property; I don't really see the point of insisting that the order I 
write "Red, Green, Blue" has some meaning. On the other hand, I'd give 
much more prominence to the name, e.g. by making values() return an 
associative array. You're much more likely to want to say "the value 
whose name is 'RED'" than "the value I defined first in the list", IMHO.

If you have some kind of initialiser syntax for the values - with or 
without a constructor - you get to have ordinals or explicit values 
(like the Flags example) if you want them, and just names if not:

enum RenewalAction{
     Deny( 0 ),
     Approve( 1 );

     public $ordinal;
}
enum Flags{
     a (1  <<  0),
     b( 1  <<  1),
     c(  1  <<  2),
     d(  1  <<  3 ); public $value; }

enum PimaryColours { RED, GREEN, BLUE }

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]