python / python/cpython

Clarifying documentation of typing.Set

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3.10 3.11 3.12 docs topic-typing
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Description

Documentation

Edit: I added some more clarification.

Documentation of typing.Set is not entirely clear

The typing module's documentation currently requires two hops when the reader looks up typing.Set.

  1. In the docstring of typing.Set it states "To annotate arguments it is preferred to use an abstract collection type such as AbstractSet." This is referring to typing.AbstractSet
  2. Docstring of typing.AbstractSet says that it is deprecated and refers the reader to collections.abc.Set, which has no docstring of its own (it is grouped together with the docstring of collections.abc.MutableSet.
    I feel we can prevent these two hops i.e. typing.Set --> typing.AbstractSet --> collections.abc.Set and direct the reader to the final destination i.e. typing.Set -> collections.abc.Set.

Suggested change

  1. typing.Set should say something like --

"To annotate arguments it is preferred to use an abstract collection type such as collections.abc.Set.
"To annotate everything else, the use of typing.Set is deprecated since version 3.9: builtins.set now supports []. See PEP 585 and Generic Alias Type"

  1. Docstring of typing.AbstractSet is fine as it is.
  2. collections.abc.Set should say something like --

"Use this to annotate arguments. For all other annotations, use builtins.set, which now supported []. See PEP 585 ...

Other generic alias types like List, Tuple, FrozenSet etc. probably could use a similar change (IF others agree that this is something that needs to changed at all.)

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

Start with the docstrings for typing.Set and collections.abc.Set, then compare the related generic alias documentation and the guidance in PEP 585. Done means the documentation directs readers from typing.Set to collections.abc.Set without the extra hop and clearly explains when to use builtins.set.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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