[swift-evolution] Working with enums by name

[Christopher Kornher]

Oops. I have wanted this feature and I have created `name` methods for non-String enums numerous times (whether I had to or not, I guess). If there is a formal proposal for this, I could not find it. I am obviously not familiar with the entire proposal but this is a feature that I have wanted almost from the first day I started using Swift.

I would prefer a `name`method for enums and not overload `description`.

A standard way of accessing the unique names of enum values would be compatible with a future variant of `enum` that would allow non-unique rawValue should Swift ever support that feature of C/C++ enums. (hint) It would become requirement for these enums, I think.

Accessing the names of enum values is extremely useful for diagnostics and quick and dirty UI e.g. playgrounds. 

> On Jun 1, 2016, at 3:07 PM, Paul Cantrell <cantrell at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jun 1, 2016, at 2:20 PM, Christopher Kornher via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jun 1, 2016, at 12:53 PM, Paul Cantrell via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> This is the case I was thinking of where the module name comes into play. Drop those enums into a framework, and you’ll get "landed(MyFramework.CoinSide.heads)". Ugh!
>> 
>> This seems to be more of namespace “import” issue than a problem with enums specifically. Declaring enums within another entity is a useful. I take advantage of qualified naming to make short, possibly non-unique enum names.
> 
> Yes, in _code_ fully qualified names are useful.
> 
> This thread is the need for unqualified names in _strings_ — for passing to external systems, logging, etc.
> 
> The problematic behavior I was pointing out is that enums get converted to a name-only string when they are at the _top_ level of a data structure, but a fully qualified Module.EnumType.caseName when they're _nested_ inside a collection or another enum. AFAIK, there's no way to override this behavior without manually coding a case statement to map enum values to strings. This proposal would solve that.
> 
> Cheers, P
> 
> 

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