python / python/typing

Annotating functions which don't raise exceptions

Open
#604 7 comments 7 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

topic: feature
Dominant language
Python
Stars
1.8k
Forks
302
Avg merge
23h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

I would find it interesting to be able to annotate functions which never throw exceptions. "Never" can be either in the absolute sense, or in the sense of "checked exceptions", with some subset of exception designated as "unchecked" (details of this designation are perhaps up to the actual tool to process annotations).

Example of a function which absolutely never raises exceptions (well, at least per language semantics, particular implementations might still have means to break with some implementation-related exceptions):

def foo(l):
    if isinstance(l, list) and len(l) > 0:
        return l[0]

Example of a function which may throw (unchecked) exception if API contract is violated:

def foo(l: list):
    if len(l) > 0:
        return l[0]

So, hopefully these examples show that the notion does exist in Python.

Now the question how to annotate it. Following the existing NoReturn, it would be called NoRaise or NoThrow. "nothrow" terminology if familiar from C++ (and it seems to be replaced even there), so perhaps sticking with native Python terminology makes sense (but "throw" is native to Python too, re: exception handling with generators).

More interesting question is where to put that annotation. Taking the example above, a natural annotation would be:

def foo(l) -> Optional(Any), NoRaise:

And I was quite surprised that the usual "implicit tuple" syntax rule doesn't apply here, and the above is SyntaxError as of CPy3.7:

Python 3.7.1 (default, Oct 22 2018, 11:21:55) 
[GCC 8.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def foo() -> list, int:
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    def foo() -> list, int:
                     ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I wonder if that warrants a separate issue report. And whether it was a cunning design choice mere mortals need to decipher, because that seems too obvious thing to overlook with an implicit tuple syntax, again (neither problematic from forma grammar perspective, even in LL it's "->" expr ("," expr)* ":", which is trivial, Python has more complex grammar rules in many places.

So, all in all, now it would need to be written as:

def foo(l) -> (Optional(Any), NoRaise):

Which is of course not as pretty as without parens.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

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

No repository files or tests are named. Start by reviewing the existing NoReturn annotation and the Python 3.7 grammar behavior described here, then clarify whether the goal is exception semantics, annotation syntax, or both. Done would require an agreed meaning for NoRaise or NoThrow and a specified valid syntax.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.