You're asking yourself "Julia already has enum functionality, why do I need Enumeration.jl?". Well Enumeration.jl:

• Encapsulates names away from code. This allows you to reuse the name in the enums as variables if you so wish.
• Unabiguous when you are referring to Fruits("apple") not Stocks("apple") for instance.
• You can evaluate that Fruits("apple") != Stocks("apple").

Enumeration.jl thus presents a much safer and cleaner programmer friendly interface to enums than the current built-in Base implementation.

The usage of Enumeration.jl is based around the Enumerate(name::Symbol, data = Dict{T, Int}) function allowing you to use any type as T for the identifier in the dictionary and the value is an integer. The name argument is the type name of the enumeration. See the example below:

Shows example with Dict{String, Int}, but could as well work with any T for String.

julia> include("Enumeration.jl")

julia> Enumerate(:Fruit, Dict("apple" => 1, "orange" => 2, "pear" => 3, "guava" => 4))

julia> myFruit = Fruit("guava")
Fruit(1, Dict("guava"=>4,"orange"=>2,"pear"=>3,"apple"=>1))

julia> yourFruit = Fruit("pear")
Fruit(3, Dict("guava"=>4,"orange"=>2,"pear"=>3,"apple"=>1))

julia> yourFruit == myFruit
false

julia> myFruit == Fruit("guava")
true

julia> myFruit == 4
true

julia> myFruit == 3
false

julia> 4 == myFruit
true

Enjoy

DP

• The data::Dict{T, Int} doesn't have to be in the enum type - this is pretty inefficient. Perhaps it should sit in some common lookup for enums resulting in a lighter-weight object.