Specialize empty collections to Any as a fallback
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Description
Context
I have a pending PR for typeshed which fixes overparameterized dict.get and dict.pop methods: python/typeshed#10294. The PR causes a lot of failures in various GitHub projects due to how mypy treats empty collections. Specifically, if dict.get is annotated as
class dict(Generic[KT, VT]):
def get(self, key: KT, default: T) -> T | VT: ...
mypy infers the type of v in
def test(d: dict[str, Any]):
v = d.get("foo", {})
to be Any | dict[<unknown>, <unknown>], instead of Any | dict[Any, Any].
Feature
Specialize empty collections to Any if no other information is available to recover type arguments.
Pitch
Using <unknown> instead of Any requires users to cast or add type annotations where they otherwise will not be necessary. See comments in the PR for a few examples from real projects.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the shown dict.get example in mypy and inspect how empty collection expressions are inferred when no type arguments can be recovered. Done means empty collections in this situation are specialized to Any rather than unknown, while the behavior remains covered by relevant type-checking tests.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- compilers
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100