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OK, that works, but it does seem dumb, or even deliberately obtuse.

The language could just as well recognize Node as it recognizes 'Node', but instead it given as a burden for the human programmer to handle.

Is it maybe because mypy is not really part of the Python language, and can't really make changes to it?




This is not mypy, it's "python-the-language": the annotations are values, and, in this case, the method annotations are evaluated when encountered - which is before the end of the class. So you are trying to use a value still not defined. It's like doing something like

    def foo() -> Bar:
       ...

    class Bar:
       ...
obviously the python interpreter cannot find a "Bar" definition during the parsing of the foo function


You're saying this is how the language works.

I'm saying the language could work differently.

The case of referring to a class inside its definition is quite different from your "Bar" case. The thing referred to is already declared, it's just not fully defined yet.

There is no logical reason I can see making it impossible for Python to honor the obvious intention of the programmer here. It seems it has just chosen not to do so. Though I'll admit I haven't thought through every weird corner case :)


PEP 563 is intended to resolve it: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0563/

As rcfox said, you can already enable this behavior, and it will be included in Python 4.0.


The language will recognise it in a future version by default, or a from future import can be used now.

mypy isn't behind (here), it's ahead.




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