Hi Andrey, 1. I'm a docstring bigot, so the only thing I can recommend is that *if* you decide to use docstrings for type annotations, please, select the format that is readable and well-supported (i.e. NumPy).
2. I don't have much to comment on how the types should be specified, but you should take into account that python is duck-typed language. Sometimes the type is "anything that implements .read() and .write() methods", or "anything that follows `__contains__` protocol". —Vladimir 07.11.2013, 13:53, "Andrey Vlasovskikh" <andrey.vlasovsk...@gmail.com>: > Hi Vladimir, > >> You should take a look at NumPy docstring conventions which are fully >> supported by Sphinx, and are actually human-readable. > > There are two questions here: > > 1. Where to put type information? > > * Docstrings > * ReStructured Text > (http://sphinx-doc.org/domains.html#the-python-domain) > * Epydoc > * NumPy > * Expressions > * Python 3 function annotations > * Decorators > > 2. What type system to use? (its syntax and semantics, see the related work > section in the Python skeletons proposal [1]) > > We think that the best place for type information would be function > annotations, but they are available only in Python 3 and there is no de facto > standard for describing types as Python expressions. > > We use docstring-based types in Python skeletons only as a simple temporary > solution, since we believe that the effort should be put in creating an > expression-based type system for Python that would be acceptable for a large > number of static analysis projects and regular Python developers. > > We would like to discuss the current implementations [1] and come up with a > unified expression-based language (perhaps, supported by a library) for > describing Python types, or at least, a set of common patterns (e.g. using a > class value as a type of its instances). > > [1]: https://github.com/JetBrains/python-skeletons#related-work > > -- > Andrey Vlasovskikh > Senior Software Developer > JetBrains > http://www.jetbrains.com/ > "Develop with pleasure!" _______________________________________________ code-quality mailing list code-quality@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/code-quality
