On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 11:28 AM Ivan Pozdeev via Python-Dev <python-dev@python.org> wrote: > > On 26.03.2020 19:24, Ethan Furman wrote: > > Before Enum, the repr for socket.AF_UNIX was: > > > > 1 > > > > Not very useful for debugging. > > On the contrary, it's perfect. I know everything I need: it's an integer > constant, end of story. > > When examining some live object, I would probably see that "1" and won't even > need to look anything up to know what I'm dealing with.
This is something I see *very* frequently from expert and novice Python programmers: the belief/assumption that seeing the concrete data is the most important thing. As an extreme expert in socket programming, you probably DO interpret the integer 1 as "AF_UNIX", but quite honestly, I wouldn't recognize it as such. But a repr that says that it's socket.AF_UNIX is far far more helpful. Consider: Suppose you have a call to socket.socket(socket.SOCK_STREAM, socket.AF_INET, socket.IPPROTO_TCP) - only they're not literal values, they're coming from elsewhere. Pre-enum, all you know is that it's being passed the integers 1, 2, and 6, and how are you going to figure out what they mean? Thanks to the enum, you get to see them with their names (which may make the bug obvious). But either way, they are "socket.AF_INET" etc, they are not "socket.AddressFamily.AF_INET" - the class is a mere implementation detail. In actual fact, the concrete integer value is just an implementation detail, too. As long as passing socket.AF_INET results in an internet-address-family socket, it doesn't really matter what the actual integer is. For the sake of cross-language debugging, it's helpful to be able to see it, but most Python programmers aren't going to need it. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/MDTY2P2UWIU2O2OYP7A6RVJLB4PA73MM/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
