Question

Initially i thought to do something like:

#EXIT CODES
class ExitCode(object):
    (USERHOME_INVALID, \
    USERHOME_CANNOT_WRITE, \
    USERHOME_CANNOT_READ, \
    BASHRC_INVALID) = range(-1, -5, -1)

But than I’ve realized that I’ll have to know exactly the total number of EXIT_CODES, so that I can pass it to the range() function. Let’s suppose I’ll have 87 (arbitrary) EXIT_CODES… I don’t want to count to 87 (not that it’s hard) but I am looking for a more elegant solution.

Any suggestions ?

EDIT:
EXIT_CODE is a negative int that will be passed to sys.exit . Instead of writing the number I prefer to use some sort of constants (something like #defines or enums in C, or enums in Java).

Answer 1

Sounds like what you want is the Python equivalent of an enumeration in C# or other similar languages. How can I represent an 'Enum' in Python? provides several solutions, though they still require the number of items you have.
EDIT: How can I represent an 'Enum' in Python? looks way better.

Or you could try something like this (probably not the best solution, though):

class _ExitCode:
    _exit_codes=["EXIT_CODE","EXIT_CODE_TWO"]
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if name in _ExitCode._exit_codes:
            return -(_ExitCode._exit_codes.index(name)+1)
        raise AttributeError("Exit code %s not found" % name)

ExitCode=_ExitCode()
print ExitCode.EXIT_CODE #-1