And the code I ended up with is:
# Inheriting from type, not object, is the key: class enum_metaclass(type): def __getitem__(self, index): return self.vals[index]
def enum(vals): class enum(object): __metaclass__ = enum_metaclass def __init__(self, val): try: self.val = type(self).vals.index(val) except: raise TypeError, "%s is not a valid %s" % (val, type(self)) enum.vals = vals return enum
A good example of why 99.9% of people don't need metaclasses. See my solution using __call__ in the other post.
Note that there's no __iter__ method anywhere! It makes an interesting little puzzle to figure out why this works. (It totally blew me away when I first tried it. Took me about five minutes of head scratching to figure it out.)
Best to add an __iter__ if you want one. The __getitem__ protocol is basically deprecated though it works for backwards compatibility.
STeVe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
