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I'm unsure if this question belongs on Code Review or Stack Overflow.

Another developer told me that I should consider adding type hints to my open source project WordHoard.

I have never used type hints before and the documentation doesn't seem intuitive. So I need to guidance on how to implement this functionality in my code.

I've started looking at adding it some low level code pieces first.

For example:

from typing import AnyStr, Dict

def colorized_text(r: int, g: int, b: int, text: str) -> AnyStr:
    """
    This function provides error messages color.
    For example:
    rgb(255, 0, 0) is displayed as the color red
    rgb(0, 255, 0) is displayed as the color green
    :param r: red color value
    :param g: green color value
    :param b: below color value
    :param text: text to colorized
    :return: string of colorized text
    """
    return f"\033[38;2;{r};{g};{b}m{text}\033[0m"

Are type hints implemented correctly in the function colorized_text?

Here is another code example.

from typing import Optional

temporary_dict_antonyms = {}

def cache_antonyms(word: str) -> [bool, str]:
    item_to_check = word
    if item_to_check in temporary_dict_antonyms.keys():
        values = temporary_dict_antonyms.get(item_to_check)
        return True, list(sorted(set(values)))
    else:
        return False, None

def insert_word_cache_antonyms(word: str, values: list[str]) -> None:
    if word in temporary_dict_antonyms:
        deduplicated_values = set(values) - set(temporary_dict_antonyms.get(word))
        temporary_dict_antonyms[word].extend(deduplicated_values)
    else:
        values = [value.strip() for value in values]
        temporary_dict_antonyms[word] = values

How do I implement type hints correctly in the second example?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

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    \$\begingroup\$ First example works, is almost correct, and can be reviewed. Second example needs to be cut away to Stack Overflow. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 17:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ I am unwilling to believe you meant .append(values). It seems more likely you intended .extend(values), leading to a single flat list of antonyms, rather than a nested list structure. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 17:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @J_H GOOD CATCH!! You found an issue that I didn't know existed. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 17:52
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Reinderien I updated the second code example so that it doesn't throw an error now. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 14:05
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ mypy can help you check if your type hints are correct. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 14:13

1 Answer 1

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Are type hints implemented correctly in the function colorized_text?

Almost; the return type should just be str, not AnyStr. AnyStr is for when (a) a function can take or return both str and bytes, (b) there are either multiple AnyStr arguments or one (or more) AnyStr arguments & an AnyStr return type, and (c) all AnyStr arguments/return types must be either all strs or all bytess when the function is actually called. A simple example would be a function that take two strs or two bytes and returns their concatenation; the arguments and return type would then all be AnyStr.

Also, you imported typing.Dict but don't use it.

How do I implement type hints correctly in the second example?

First, you need an annotation for temporary_dict_antonyms. It appears to be a dict mapping strs to lists of strs, so write temporary_dict_antonyms: dict[str, list[str]] = {}.

Secondly, to annotate a tuple (such as in cache_antonyms's return type), you need to write either tuple[ArgType1, ArgType2] etc. or tuple[ArgType, ...] for a tuple of variable length where all elements are the same type.

Now, cache_antonyms can return either a tuple of a bool and a list[str] or a bool and a None. I don't know why you feel the need to return a bool when the caller could just check whether the second field is non-None, but the simplest way to annotate the return value is -> tuple[bool, Optional[list[str]]].

By the way, I would recommend implementing cache_antonyms with a single dict query as follows:

def cache_antonyms(word: str) -> tuple[bool, Optional[list[str]]]:
    try:
        values = temporary_dict_antonyms[word]
    except KeyError:
        return (False, None)
    else:
        return (True, sorted(set(values)))  # sorted() already returns a list

The annotations on insert_word_cache_antonyms are fine, but mypy will likely complain about set(temporary_dict_antonyms.get(word)), because the get() can return None, which is not a valid input to set(); change it to set(temporary_dict_antonyms[word]).

Additional comments:

  • If you want your code to run on Pythons before 3.9, then any parametrized dict, list, tuple, etc. in your annotations need to be swapped out for typing.Dict etc. — or, alternatively, just add from __future__ import annotations to the top of your code.

  • Since the values of temporary_dict_antonyms are always converted to sets after retrieval, you should probably just store sets in the dict in the first place instead.

  • In insert_word_cache_antonyms, you strip() the elements of values when the word is not in the dict, but you don't do it when adding to a pre-existing collection of values; are you sure that's what you want?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for the reply. When I exchanged your cache_antonyms code with mine I get an error Unresolved reference 'word' \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 17:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also I use the 'strip()' function to remove the leading and trailing spaces from the strings in the first list. I could move this strip() to the function (scraper) that creates this list. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 17:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Lifeiscomplex: I believe the error was caused by a missing ] in the return type annotation. Try now. // Regarding the strip(), my point was more that it seems odd and inconsistent to only strip the first batch of values added for a word but not any subsequent batches. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 17:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ Why is this correct cache_antonyms(word: str) -> tuple[bool, Optional[list[str]]] using type hints and this isn't cache_antonyms(word: str) -> [bool, str]? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 17, 2023 at 15:28
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    \$\begingroup\$ Union[str, list[str]] would mean that temporary_dict_antonyms was either a str or a list of str, which is not right at all for this case. It's a dict, so you need to declare it as dict[KeyType, ValueType]; in this case, the dict maps strs to lists of strs, so dict[str, list[str]]. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 17, 2023 at 21:43

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