JuliaPy / JuliaPy/PythonCall.jl

Julia objects are falsely marked as subtypes of most Python abstract base classes.

Open
#390 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
bug
Dominant language
Julia
Stars
1.1k
Forks
86
Avg merge
1d 22h
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

**Affects:** JuliaCall

**Describe the bug**

An example of this that I ran into is that everything is reported as itterable, even when it cannot be iterated.

This looks pretty bad on the surface:
```pycon
>>> import collections
>>> isinstance([1,2,3], collections.abc.Iterable)
True
>>> isinstance(1, collections.abc.Iterable)
False
>>> isinstance(sum, collections.abc.Iterable)
False
>>> f = jl.seval("f(x) = x+1")
>>> isinstance(f, collections.abc.Iterable)
True
>>> s = jl.seval(":a")
>>> isinstance(s, collections.abc.Iterable)
True
>>> f
Julia: f (generic function with 1 method)
>>> s
Julia: :a
```

And indeed it causes bugs when passing non-iterable Julia objects to Python functions which check for iterability and then, if iterable, iterate. For example, this function in PyTorch:

https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/blob/185e76238d9f634c9c8d6fc6be75aa4fc71e04d3/torch/autograd/gradcheck.py#L78-L87

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by reproducing the isinstance examples from the issue in PythonCall.jl, including the Julia function and Symbol cases, then trace how Julia objects interact with collections.abc.Iterable checks. Done means genuinely non-iterable Julia objects are no longer reported as Iterable and the cited PyTorch gradcheck scenario behaves correctly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia, python
Domain
api
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.