On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:11 AM, Phil Thompson
I understand now. The documentation, as it stands, is correct and consistent but (to me) the meaning of Optional is completely counter-intuitive. What you suggest with str = ... is exactly what I need. Adding a section to the docs describing that should clear up the confusion.
I tried to add some clarity to the docs with this paragraph: Note that this is not the same concept as an optional argument, which is one that has a default. An optional argument with a default needn't use the ``Optional`` qualifier on its type annotation (although it is inferred if the default is ``None``). A mandatory argument may still have an ``Optional`` type if an explicit value of ``None`` is allowed. Should be live on docs.python.org with the next push (I don't recall the delay, at most a day IIRC). -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)