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

[Guido van Rossum]

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> ... https://chadaustin.me/2015/07/sum-types/ ...
>> unions in Python are always tagged (since you can alway introspect the object type).

Greg Ewing replied:
> The "Sum" types talked about in the referenced article are
> what Haskell calls "algebraic types". They're not really the
> same as the Union[X,Y] types we're talking about here,
> because a Union type simply tells the type checker that
> one of a number of different types could be present at
> run time. The code might introspect on the type, but it
> doesn't have to do anything special to access one of the
> branches of the union -- it just goes ahead and uses the
> value.
>
> An algebraic type, on the other hand, is a new type of
> run-time object that has to be explicitly unpacked to
> access its contents. It's more like a class in that
> respect.

I know. But this could be considered syntactic sugar. And the article
insists that Sum types are not really the same as classes either
(they're also a form of syntactic sugar).

Anyway, I did set up a chat with the Chad (that article's author) and
maybe we'll all get some more clarity.

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