type hinting backward compatibility with python 3.0 to 3.4

[oliver]

Could something like this support forward declarations without the hackish
use of strings?

On Sun, 21 May 2017 at 12:01 justin walters <walters.justin01 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 2:38 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 7:29 PM, bartc <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > They might be /created/ at runtime, but it's a pretty good bet that the
> > name
> > > A in this declaration:
> > >
> > >   class A...
> > >
> > > is the name of a class. The question in Python, as always, is whether
> an
> > A
> > > used as the name of a type in a type, is still this same A. And
> > presumably
> > > such a type hint can precede the declaration of A.
> > >
> > > In fact the declaration of A might be in a different module from its
> use
> > in
> > > a type hint, which means that, in the CPython byte-code compiler
> anyway,
> > it
> > > is not visible at compile-time, when type hints could best be put to
> good
> > > effect.
> >
> > That isn't a problem - mypy follows imports. It'd be pretty useless if
> > it didn't :)
> >
> > > Furthermore, both A, and the type-hinting code, might be conditional.
> So
> > > that on Tuesdays, A is a class, the rest of the week it's the name of a
> > > module.
> >
> > Or, more plausible example: on platforms that have a system-provided
> > source of entropy, random.random is an instance of SystemRandom, but
> > on those that don't, it's an instance of DeterministicRandom with an
> > arbitrarily-chosen seed. The two will have slightly different APIs.
> >
> > > Python doesn't make things easy.
> >
> > Python makes things flexible, which has a cost.
> >
> > ChrisA
> > --
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> >
>
> Perhaps a good way to distinguish between a class that can be used as a
> type and a class
> that cannot be used as a type would be to require some sort of dunder
> method be
> defined on the type class. At first I was thinking `__type__`, but then I
> remembered that's
> already in use. maybe something as simple as `__hint__`.
>
> That or only allow classes that inherit from `type` to be used in type
> annotations.
>
> I'm just spit balling ideas here.
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
-- 
Oliver
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