Serhiy Storchaka added the comment: The name IntFlags is inspired by the Flags attribute in C# (this is the most close concept). The "Int" prefix is added for parallel with IntEnum and because the class behaves as int in some contexts (supports operators |, &, ^, ~ and can be passed to functions that require int). I don't know whether there is a need in Flags class that is not a subclass of int.
Other languages provide something like EnumSet - a specialized set of enums. But it has different interface. 1) If there are enum members FOO and BAR, their union is {FOO, BAR}, not FOO|BAR. 2) The union member itself is not a set. 3) A set can contain only predefined set of values (IntFlag allows non-defined bits be set). If you thing that non-int flags could be useful, you can consider adding EnumSet for general enums and IntFlags (or just Flags) for int-like enums. But I think that new API can just use a set or a tuple of enums. IntFlags is needed for compatibility with old API or C API. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue23591> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com