[Python-ideas] "Sum" Type hinting [was: Type hinting for path-related functions]

[Koos Zevenhoven]

First of all, thanks for posting, Stephen. I will be responding more
thoroughly later, I'll first comment on some points.

On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 8:28 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
[...]
> I could argue that this is why Guido was right to remove the
> restriction that os.fspath return str.  The __fspath__ method is part
> of the "sum category os.path"[1], which is a collection of operations
> on bytes and on str that parallel each other because they are
> equivalent representations of filesystem paths.  os.fspath therefore
> is also part of this category.  If you want to take the result out of
> this category and make it str, use os.fsdecode (which is *not* part of
> this category *because* the codomain is str, not Sum[bytes,str]).

Yes, indeed. This was also the reason why, in the python-dev
discussions, I have been arguing for __fspath__ to be able to return
both str and bytes *from the beginning*, although I have phrased it
quite differently and I think in several different ways. An this is
also the reason why, more recently, I've been arguing that os.fspath
should *always* allow this too. Before that, I was compromizing
towards desires to enforce str, while making the polymorphicity
optionally available.

I was very happy to learn Guido thought the same, because it meant I
could stop arguing for that. If only the path discussion would have
had a better signal-to-noise ratio, then this would perhaps have
happened faster and many many many man hours would have been saved.

-- Koos

> Footnotes:
> [1]  The quotes mean "I think I could make this precise but it would
> be boring.  Bear with me, and don't be distracted by the fact that
> lots of stuff in this 'category' aren't in the os.path *module* -- eg,
> open() and __fspath__ itself."  I hope that the categorical language
> will be a useful metaphor for those who understand category theory,
> but really the whole thing is a hand-wavy path to "what implementation
> would look like".