[PHP-DEV] Clarification on the Enum language structure

[Jarrod Nettles]

I was reading the RFC for the proposed enum language structure and was 
wondering if I could get some clarification on the implementation. Forgive me 
if this is in the patch or has been discussed already but based solely on what 
is written in the RFC I have some concerns.

http://wiki.php.net/rfc/enum

Nowhere in the RFC does it mention any of the enumerations as having a name, 
like a class would have a name. This seems like a critical point to me, for the 
following reasons.


·         People will want multiple enumerations.

·         Other programming languages allow for named enumerations.

·         Parameters should be able to be type-hinted against enumerations just 
like they are classes. This will be a huge selling point, especially for 
framework developers and people who rely heavily on auto-complete from their 
IDEs.

·         It will be difficult to namespace enumerations without a name, unless 
the intent is that there is a single global enum per namespace.

Also, enums inside of classes should be like any other property or method 
inside of a class in that you should able to mark them as public, private, or 
protected.

So, my proposed syntax would look something more like this.

namespace System\Logs
{
                enum Levels{
                                DEBUG,
                                INFO,
                                WARNING,
                                ERROR
                };
}

//or inside of a class

namespace System\Syntax
{
                class Tokens{
                                public enum ControlStatements{
                                                T_IF = 258,
                                                T_ELSE,
                                                T_WHILE,
                                                T_DO
                                };

                                protected enum Operators{
                                                IS_IDENTICAL = 15,
                                                IS_NOT_IDENTICAL,
                                                IS_EQUAL,
                                                IS_NOT_EQUAL,
                                                IS_SMALLER,
                                                IS_SMALLER_OR_EQUAL
                                };
                }
}

Thanks!

Jarrod Nettles
Application Developer - Technology
INCCRRA
p 309.829.5327 - f 309.828.1808

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