PyCQA / PyCQA/pyflakes

Decorated Function Should Be Considered Used

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Description

Functions with a decorator are considered unused, leading to situations like https://github.com/PyCQA/pyflakes/issues/320 and https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/17795.

If I run flake8 on the:

def my_overload(func):
    print(func)
    pass

@my_overload
def utf8(value: bytes) -> bytes:
    pass

@my_overload
def utf8(value: str) -> bytes:
    pass

def utf8(value):
    pass  # actual implementation

I get:

test.py:8:1: F811 redefinition of unused 'utf8' from line 4
test.py:12:1: F811 redefinition of unused 'utf8' from line 8

But the semantically-equivalent:

def utf8(value: bytes) -> bytes:
    pass
my_overload(utf8)

def utf8(value: str) -> bytes:
    pass
my_overload(utf8)

def utf8(value):
    pass  # actual implementation

Does not have any errors. As in my example above, annotations to functions have arbitrary side-effects and should be considered a use of the function

Alternatives:
I can either add an additional prepend overload to my own decorator

def my_decorator(func):
    return func

@overload
@my_decorator
def utf8(value: None) -> None:
    pass

Or I can add two noqa per overloaded function declaration:

@my_overload  # noqa
def utf8(value: str) -> bytes:  # noqa
    pass

These both work for now but it would be nice if I didn't have to do them.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no repository files or tests. Start by reproducing the decorator and equivalent direct-call examples, then trace the existing unused-name and F811 analysis; done means decorated definitions are treated as used without suppressing genuine redefinition warnings.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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