Hi Ben, On 2010-08-08 01:16, Ben Finney wrote: > Don't use strings for such values. The data isn't going to be used, so > there's no sense using a semantically rich data type like a string. > > Instead, use an ‘object’ instance; then, the only way to get a binding > that will compare equal is to use the very object itself. > > FORWARD = object() > BACKWARD = object()
Yes, that's the obvious approach. :-) I had used strings in the example with the reasoning that they could be readily used in messages (from my post: "Using a string instead of an `object()` has the advantage that it makes usage in error messages easier."). For the record, another approach I've seen is something like FORWARD, BACKWARD, UNKNOWN = range(3) This has the same problem as when using strings for the constants but looking at the module contents it's a bit more obvious that these are just "magic numbers", so presumably the constant names should be used instead. Stefan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
