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Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/library/typing.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/library/typing.rst | 47 |
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 26 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/typing.rst b/Doc/library/typing.rst index 54cc3ea3311..69df09c7795 100644 --- a/Doc/library/typing.rst +++ b/Doc/library/typing.rst @@ -3500,20 +3500,11 @@ Introspection helpers Evaluate an :class:`annotationlib.ForwardRef` as a :term:`type hint`. This is similar to calling :meth:`annotationlib.ForwardRef.evaluate`, - but unlike that method, :func:`!evaluate_forward_ref` also: - - * Recursively evaluates forward references nested within the type hint. - * Raises :exc:`TypeError` when it encounters certain objects that are - not valid type hints. - * Replaces type hints that evaluate to :const:`!None` with - :class:`types.NoneType`. - * Supports the :attr:`~annotationlib.Format.FORWARDREF` and - :attr:`~annotationlib.Format.STRING` formats. + but unlike that method, :func:`!evaluate_forward_ref` also + recursively evaluates forward references nested within the type hint. See the documentation for :meth:`annotationlib.ForwardRef.evaluate` for - the meaning of the *owner*, *globals*, *locals*, and *type_params* parameters. - *format* specifies the format of the annotation and is a member of - the :class:`annotationlib.Format` enum. + the meaning of the *owner*, *globals*, *locals*, *type_params*, and *format* parameters. .. versionadded:: 3.14 @@ -3539,28 +3530,32 @@ Constant .. data:: TYPE_CHECKING A special constant that is assumed to be ``True`` by 3rd party static - type checkers. It is ``False`` at runtime. + type checkers. It's ``False`` at runtime. + + A module which is expensive to import, and which only contain types + used for typing annotations, can be safely imported inside an + ``if TYPE_CHECKING:`` block. This prevents the module from actually + being imported at runtime; annotations aren't eagerly evaluated + (see :pep:`649`) so using undefined symbols in annotations is + harmless--as long as you don't later examine them. + Your static type analysis tool will set ``TYPE_CHECKING`` to + ``True`` during static type analysis, which means the module will + be imported and the types will be checked properly during such analysis. Usage:: if TYPE_CHECKING: import expensive_mod - def fun(arg: 'expensive_mod.SomeType') -> None: + def fun(arg: expensive_mod.SomeType) -> None: local_var: expensive_mod.AnotherType = other_fun() - The first type annotation must be enclosed in quotes, making it a - "forward reference", to hide the ``expensive_mod`` reference from the - interpreter runtime. Type annotations for local variables are not - evaluated, so the second annotation does not need to be enclosed in quotes. - - .. note:: - - If ``from __future__ import annotations`` is used, - annotations are not evaluated at function definition time. - Instead, they are stored as strings in ``__annotations__``. - This makes it unnecessary to use quotes around the annotation - (see :pep:`563`). + If you occasionally need to examine type annotations at runtime + which may contain undefined symbols, use + :meth:`annotationlib.get_annotations` with a ``format`` parameter + of :attr:`annotationlib.Format.STRING` or + :attr:`annotationlib.Format.FORWARDREF` to safely retrieve the + annotations without raising :exc:`NameError`. .. versionadded:: 3.5.2 |