[Python-Dev] Is static typing still optional? (original) (raw)

Chris Barker chris.barker at noaa.gov
Thu Dec 21 01:46:01 EST 2017

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 5:29 PM, Eric V. Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:

There is definitely a passive bias towards using types with dataclasses in that the Eric (the author) doesn't appear to want an example without them in the pep/docs.

I'm not sure what such an example would look like. Do you mean without annotations? IIUC, there is not way to make a dataclass without annotations, yes? That it, using annotations to determine the fields is the one and only way the decorator works. So it's impossible to give an example without annotations, yes?

Or do you mean without specifying the "correct" type, like:

@dataclass class C: x: int = 'hello world' It may be a good idea to have an example like that in the docs (but probably not the PEP) to make it clear that the type is not used in any way at run time.

But I don't think that anyone is suggesting that would be a recommended practice.

I suggest that it be clear in the docs, and ideally in the PEP, that the dataclass decorator is using the *annotation" syntax, and that the the only relevant part it uses is that an annotation exists, but the value of the annotation is essentially (completely?) ignored. So we should have examples like:

@dataclass class C: a: ... # field with no default b: ... = 0 # filed with a default value

Then maybe:

@dataclass class C: a: "the a parameter" # field with no default b: "another, different parameter" = 0.0 # field with a default

Then the docs can go to say that if the user wants to specify a type for use with a static type checking pre-processor, they can do it like so:

@dataclass class C: a: int # integer field with no default b: float = 0.0 # float field with a default

And the types will be recognized by type checkers such as mypy.

And I think the non-typed examples should go first in the docs.

This is completely analogous to how all the other parts of python are taught. Would anyone suggest that the very first example of a function definition that a newbie sees would be:

def func(a: int, b:float = 0.0): body_of_function

Then, maybe way down on the page, you mention that oh, by the way, those types are completely ignored by Python. And not even give any examples without types?

Re-reading my post you referenced, is it just an example using typing.Any?

I actually think that is exactly the wrong point -- typing.Any is still using type hinting -- it's an explicit way to say, "any type will do", but it's only relevant if you are using a type checker. We really need examples for folks that don't know or care about type hinting at all.

typing.Any is for use by people that are explicitly adding type hinting, and should be discussed in type hinting documentation.

I'm okay with that in the docs, I just didn't want to focus on it in the PEP. I want the PEP to only have the one reference to typing, for typing.ClassVar. I figure the people reading the PEP can extrapolate to all of the possible uses for annotations that they don't need to see a typing.Any example.

no they don't, but they DO need to see examples without type hints at all.

-Chris

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Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer

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