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Author Dominik V.
Recipients Dominik V., docs@python
Date 2020-11-10.19:35:36
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id <1605036937.3.0.364895182043.issue42317@roundup.psfhosted.org>
In-reply-to
Content
Due to caching of `__getitem__` for generic types, the order of arguments as returned by `get_args` might be different for Union:

```python
>>> from typing import List, Union, get_args
>>> get_args(get_args(List[Union[int, str]])[0])
(<class 'int'>, <class 'str'>)
>>> get_args(get_args(List[Union[str, int]])[0])
(<class 'int'>, <class 'str'>)
```

This is because `List[Union[int, str]] is List[Union[str, int]]`.

I understand that caching is useful to reduce the memory footprint of type hints, so I suggest to update the documentation of `get_args`. At the moment it reads:

> For a typing object of the form X[Y, Z, ...] these functions return X and (Y, Z, ...).

This seems to imply that the returned objects are identical to the ones in the form `X[Y, Z, ...]`. However that's not the case:

```python
>>> U1 = Union[int, str]
>>> U2 = Union[str, int]
>>> get_args(List[U1])[0] is U1
True
>>> get_args(List[U2])[0] is U2
False
```

I'm not so much concerned about the identity, but the fact that a subsequent call to `get_args` on the Union returns a different type seems to be relevant.

So I propose to add the following sentence to the `get_args` docs:

> [...], it gets normalized to the original class.
> If `X` is a `Union`, the order of `(Y, Z, ...)` can be different from the one of the original arguments `[Y, Z, ...]`.

Or alternatively:

> [...], it gets normalized to the original class.
> If `X` is a `Union`, the order of `(Y, Z, ...)` is arbitrary.

The second version is shorter but it's not completely accurate (since the order is actually not arbitrary).
History
Date User Action Args
2020-11-10 19:35:37Dominik V.setrecipients: + Dominik V., docs@python
2020-11-10 19:35:37Dominik V.setmessageid: <1605036937.3.0.364895182043.issue42317@roundup.psfhosted.org>
2020-11-10 19:35:37Dominik V.linkissue42317 messages
2020-11-10 19:35:36Dominik V.create