[Python-Dev] Add more SyntaxWarnings?

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 2:55 PM Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 9:42 AM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>
> wrote:
> > We could say that implementations are allowed to raise errors at compile
> > time instead of run time, but aren't required to. Then it becomes a
> > matter of "quality of implementation".
> >
> > For literal ints, strings, None, etc we can tell at compile time that an
> > error will occur. All of these cannot fail to raise (short of changing
> > the interpreter, in which case you're not using Python anymore):
> >
> >     1 + "1"  # raises TypeError
> >     None[x]  # TypeError
> >     1.234(x)  # TypeError
> >     "spam".idnex("a")  # AttributeError
> >
> > In these specific cases, there is nothing wrong with the *syntax*, but a
> > compiler should be permitted to immediately raise the same exception
> > that would otherwise occur at run time. This is a form of peephole
> > optimization, I guess.
>
> +1. If it's something that the peephole optimizer is already allowed
> to change (eg "1"+"1" is constant-folded) and there is absolutely no
> way that it can ever be changed at run time, then raising at compile
> time can't hurt [1]. It'd be as implementation-dependent and
> version-dependent as the peephole optimizer itself.
>

I'm -1 on all of these cases. There's nothing mysterious about e.g.
`TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'`, unlike the
case of the two concatenated tuples. (Surely people get errors about
int+str all the time, and they've never complained -- unlike the tuple
tuple case.)


> Does there need to be a new subclass of SyntaxError for "Technically
> Valid But Not Meaningful" problems? Is there value in distinguishing
> "InevitableTypeError" from "InevitableAttributeError"?
>

I don't think there's a *general* problem to be solved here.


> ChrisA
>
> [1] Yes, I know about XKCD 1172, but if someone's saying "if
> shouldnt_happen: None[None]" then that's their problem.
>

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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