On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 1:06 AM, Jacco van Dorp <j.van.d...@deonet.nl> wrote: > I > > 2018-04-24 15:58 GMT+02:00 Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com>: >> On 24 April 2018 at 22:52, Jacco van Dorp <j.van.d...@deonet.nl> wrote: >>> Wouldn't it be cleaner to use enums by default instead of those magic >>> strings ? for example, for warnings filter actions, (section 29.5.2), >>> quite near the top of the page. >> >> "It's cleaner" isn't a user problem though. The main justification for >> using enums is that they're easier to interpret in log messages and >> expection tracebacks than opaque constants, and that argument is much >> weaker for well-chosen string constants than it is for other constants >> (like the numeric constants in the socket and errno modules). >> >> For backwards compatibility reasons, we'd want to keep accepting the >> plain string versions anyway (implicitly converting them to their enum >> counterparts). >> >> At a less philosophical level, many of the cases where we use magic >> strings are in code that has to work even when the import system isn't >> working yet - that's relatively straightforward to achieve when the >> code is only relying on strings with particular contents, but *much* >> harder if they're relying on a higher level type like enum objects. >> >> Cheers, >> Nick. > > > I guess we could add inconsistency as a con, then, since if the import > system isn't working at places where you'd like to use the Enums (or > even executing python code ?). This would mean that to the casual > observer, it'd be arbitrary where they could be used instead. > > I wonder how many of these would be in places used by most people, > though. I don't mind putting in some time to figure it out, but I have > no idea where to start. Is there any easily searchable place where I > could scan the standard library for occurences of magic strings ?
First, though, can you enumerate (pun intended) the problems with magic strings? You list "no magic strings" as a benefit, as if it's self-evident; I'm not sure that it is. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
