Yes, exactly.

Specifically, the "wrong" example in section 'Multiple Type Variable Tuples: Not Allowed' suggests that maybe what is wrong is that `Generic` was given more than one unpacked type variable tuple.  The actual problem is a consequence of that: `class Array` has more than one type variable tuple as type parameters.  (But there are other ways that could happen and all of them should be wrong.)

I think it might be good to say that explicitly in that section.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 4:18 PM Matthew Rahtz <mrahtz@google.com> wrote:
Thanks also Kevin for this feedback!

Good point about being careful to distinguish type parameters vs type arguments. If I understand correctly, you're making two points:

1. The wording of the 'Multiple Type Variable Tuples: Not Allowed' section - you're saying that we're being a bit imprecise here in saying that we disallow multiple TypeVarTuples in a type parameter list, given that in e.g. `def f(x: *Ts1, y: *Ts2)`, both Ts1 and Ts2 are members of the parameter list for the function f, but there it's unambiguous, so in fact it is allowed.

2. Use of wrong terminology elsewhere in the PEP. Agreed.

I'll draft a PR tweaking the wording to fix both these points.


On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 at 11:28, Kevin Millikin <kmillikin@deepmind.com> wrote:
The wording there probably should be improved.  I had a different interpretation when I read that, so that suggests it needs to be clarified.

We should ensure to draw a clear distinction between type parameters and type arguments.  (Generic classes and functions are parameterized over type parameters and they have a type parameter list that is implicit in the syntax.  Generic classes can be explicitly instantiated by giving them type arguments, and an instantiation has a (explicit or implicit) type argument list.)

So when I read:

"""
As of this PEP, only a single type variable tuple may appear in a type parameter list:

class Array(Generic[*Ts1, *Ts2]): ...  # Error\
"""

I interpreted it to mean that the error is that the type _parameters_ of the generic class Array include *Ts1 and *Ts2 (not that they were used as type arguments to Generic).  Similarly, this should be an error:

class Array(dict[*Ts1], Generator[*Ts2]): ...

even though there is only a single type variable tuple appearing in a type _argument_ list.

The reason for the restriction is that the tupling of Array's type arguments is not explicit in an instantiation of Array, so we rely on this restriction so that they can be unambiguously tupled.

I don't think there is necessarily a similar restriction on a generic function's type parameters, because we don't have the ability to explicitly instantiate generic functions anyway.

An alternative wording is along the lines of: "As of this PEP, only a single type variable tuple may appear among a generic class's type parameters."

def foo(*args: tuple[*Ts1, *Ts2]) -> ...

is already prohibited by "Multiple Unpackings in a Tuple: Not Allowed".

There are three other occurrences of "type parameter list" in the PEP.  Two of them talk about instantiating generic type aliases and should be changed to "type argument list".  The last one is less clear, I can't quite parse out what it's trying to say.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 5:04 PM Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 4:57 AM Petr Viktorin <pviktori@redhat.com> wrote:
Matthew Rahtz wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> We've got to the stage now with PEP 646 that we're feeling pretty happy
> with it. So far though we've mainly been workshopping it in typing-sig, so
> as PEP 1 requires we're asking for some feedback here too before submitting
> it to the steering council.
>
> If you have time over the next couple of weeks, please take a look at the
> current draft and let us know your thoughts:
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0646/ (Note that the final couple of
> sections are out of date; https://github.com/python/peps/pull/1880
> clarifies which grammar changes would be required, now that PEP 637 has
> been rejected. We also have a second PR in progress at
> https://github.com/python/peps/pull/1881 clarifying some of the motivation.)
>
> Thanks!
> Matthew and Pradeep

Hi,
I'm very late to the discussion -- I relied on the typing-sig and SC to
handle this, but now that I'm on the SC, I no longer have that luxury :)
This mail has my own opinions, not necessarily the SC's.


I've read the PEP, and I quite like it! It's clear that typing-sig
thought this through very well.
The thing that surprised me is the proposed changes that affect more
than typing annotations. Quite deep in the PEP, the "Grammar Changes"
section explains the (quite exciting) change to make star-unpacking
possible in normal indexing operations, e.g.::

     idxs_to_select = (1, 2)
     array[0, *idxs_to_select, -1]  # Equivalent to [0, 1, 2, -1]

However, the PEP is silent about indexing assignment, e.g.::

     array[0, *idxs_to_select, -1] = 1

IMO, it would be very confusing to not keep these in sync. If they are,
the assignment change should be documented and tested appropriately. Is
that the plan?

The previous SC approved the PEP despite this.

If you want to convince the SC to request this feature parity in the PEP, I won't stop you.

But unless that happens I would rather not update the PEP again (it's been tough to get to this point).

Maybe you can write a separate PEP? That would probably be simpler for all involved (the PEP 646 authors would not have to be involved, and the separate PEP would be very straightforward.
 
For a second point, the PEP says:

> this PEP disallows multiple unpacked TypeVarTuples within a single type parameter list. This requirement would therefore need to be implemented in type checking tools themselves rather than at the syntax level.

Typing annotations are sometimes used for other things than *static*
typing, and I wouldn't be surprised if type checkers themselves started
allowing this (as a non-standard extension in cases where things aren't
ambiguous):

     def tprod(Generic[*T1], Generic[*T2]) -> Generic[*T1, *T2]: ...

I don't think that sentence is trying to forbid this. The problem appears in things like

def foo(*args: tuple[*Ts1, *Ts2]) -> ...

Maybe the wording in the PEP can be imrpoved?
 
If multiple unpackings in a tuple aren't blocked by the compiler, they
should be tested and documented as syntactically valid annotations --
just not valid static typing annotations (even though other uses are
currently deprecated). In particular, once the compiler allows multiple
unpackings, disallowing them at the syntax level later would mean
breaking backwards compatibility.
Do we share that view?

Agreed that the syntax with multiple stars will not be deprecated at runtime, but type checkers may reject it. (Just as type checkers reject many other programs that would run fine.)
 
And after reading the PEP again, I'm unclear on some details in the
Aliases section. Could you please clarify these examples for me?

SplitDataset = Tuple[Array[*Ts], Array[*Ts]]
SplitDataset[Height]  # Valid? What would this be equivalent to?


TwoArrays = Tuple[Array[*Ts1], Array[*Ts2]]
TwoArrays[Height]  # Valid? Equivalent to what? How to specify this fully?

I'll leave this to the PEP authors to address.

--
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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