Tim Chase <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Do you anticipate having parameters like socket.AF_INET >>> that are currently integers, become enumeration members >>> in future releases? >> >> Since these are derived from values defined as integers >> in C, it's probably better to leave them that way. There >> may be code that relies on them being integers or having >> those integer values. > >I'd say that "because something is done in C, it's the best >way to do it in Python" is a bad line of reasoning :) If I >wanted C, I'd use C.
The problem is that the C language binding in this case is simply exposing the even lower level operating system interface. At that level, the address family is indeed just an arbitrary integer. The socket man page on (for example) Solaris-9 says things like, "The currently understood formats are", and "If a protocol is specified by the caller, then it will be packaged into a socket level option request and sent to the underlying pro- tocol layers". You don't really know for sure if you used a valid value until the low-level protocol drivers look at the number you passed in. This doesn't sound like an enum to me. There are plenty of places where we pass around integers that would be better served by enums. Address families and protocol numbers in the socket interface just isn't one of them. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
