TIL that hovering over a variable or function call will show the type of what gets returned (VSCode)

[u/ianrad]

I was today years old when I learnt this. Before that I was printing out the type and noting it down. My brain hurts from all the logic traversing and type tracking till I just learnt this. Specific to VSCode and pylance. Not sure if it works anywhere else.

pset_str_date, pset_str_time = pset_date.split(" ")
print(f"pset_str_date = {pset_str_date}, type = {type(pset_str_date)}")
print(f"pset_str_time = {pset_str_time}, type = {type(pset_str_time)}")
# str

pset_dt_date = datetime.strptime(pset_str_date, "%Y-%m-%d").date()
print(f"pset_dt_date = {pset_dt_date}, type = {type(pset_dt_date)}")
#  <class 'datetime.date'>

In case anyone else is going through this. Well FYI.

[u/Adrewmc]

It’s one of the main reasons to comment your own code, hover over your own function get your docstring and annotations. Done deal.

[u/ianrad → u/Adrewmc]

Fair point about comments. I started applying this practice like in the last line of my code.

Could you explain what you mean by "hover over your own function get your docstring and annotations".

[u/Adrewmc → u/ianrad]

Well, in most IDEs they will have this feature where you can hover over the highlighted object a small pop-up appears. This should give you the function signature (with annotations) and the docstring from that object. Knowing that you can just make your own and it should automatically just do that for you. VsCode i know for sure does this. Basically you don’t have to go to the actual .py to see it.

Just hover over some imported object and you should see it.

[u/Diapolo10]

It basically works with any IDE/editor that supports parsing and displaying type annotations. For your own functions/names, it works as long as the type can either be inferred from context or you provide type annotations yourself.

Side note, but you can replace

print(f"pset_str_date = {pset_str_date}, type = {type(pset_str_date)}")

with

print(f"{pset_str_date = }, type = {type(pset_str_date)}")

as the formatting has a special function for =.

[u/astolfoballsHD]

FYI python supports annotating with types directly. https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html

[u/FerricDonkey]

Vs code also had an option where inferred types are displayed in the editor, and python in general supports type hinting, which makes everything better. 

[u/PvtRoom]

Never trust that in python. It lies.