[PHP-DEV] [Discussion]

[Bilge]

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