[Python-3000] Conventions for annotation consumers (was: Re: Draft pre-PEP: function annotations) (original) (raw)

Paul Prescod paul at prescod.net
Tue Aug 15 21:30:36 CEST 2006

On 8/15/06, Collin Winter <collinw at gmail.com> wrote:

So basically what you're saying is that there would be a more-or-less standard wrapper for each application of function annotations.

No, I explicitly said that there may or may not arise standards based upon the existence or non-existence of community consensus and convergence of requirements. Just as there may or may not arise a standard Python web application framework depending on whether the community converges or does not.

How is

this significantly better than my dict-based approach, which uses standardised dict keys to indicate the kind of metadata?

The dict-based approach introduces an extra namespace to manage. What if two different groups start fighting over the keyword "type" or "doc" or "lock"? Python already has a module system that allows you to use the word "type" and me to use the word "type" without conflict (though I can't guarantee that it won't be confusing!). Python's module system allows renaming and abbreviating: both valuable features.

Also, the dict-based approach is just more punctuation to type. What is the dict equivalent for:

def foo(a: type(int)) -> type(int): ...

versus

def foo(a: {"type":int}) -> {"type": int}:

In my approach you could do this:

Int = type(int)

def foo(a: Int) -> Int

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