#303: This title is required or is it optional?

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Michael #1: Human regular expressions revisited

• via Mikael Honkala
• We mentioned of Al Sweigart's humre in Python Bytes…
• Mikael went on a little search and compiled my findings into this repo.
• A lot of people feel that re needs some help. At least 3 of the "serious" packages I found came out in the last few months.
• Since a package like this is not overly complex to make, all the ways to approach the problem are clearly being explored.
• Unfortunately these seem to be mostly single-person efforts, and many have fallen to the wayside before long.
• Hopefully there's some consolidation on the horizon, to share some of the maintenance effort and establish some of the packages as here for the long haul.
• The list could be useful to you if you are:
  • Looking for a tool: Check the list to get a quick idea of the "look and feel" of each package.
  • Thinking about building a tool: Check the list for alternative approaches, and maybe consider if contributing to an existing package might be a better way to get what you need.
  • Building a tool, or already have one: Use the list to clarify and communicate what the main differences and strengths of your solution are.

Brian #2: Implicit Optional Types Will Be Disabled by Default

• … in a future mypy feature release (possibly the next one after 0.98x) …
• Thanks Adam Johnson for spotting this and letting us know
• Stop doing this: s: str = None
• Do one of these:
  • s: str | None = None
  • s: Union[str, None] = None
  • s: Optional[str] = None ← but this has problems
• Optional != optional
  • From python docs:
    • ”Optional[X] is equivalent to X | None (or Union[X, None]).”
    • “Note that this is not the same concept as an optional argument, which is one that has a default. An optional argument with a default does not require the Optional qualifier on its type annotation just because it is optional. “
• Best described in FastAPI docs, Python Types Intro, starting at “Possibly None"
• Recommendation is to use:
  • s: str | None = None for Python 3.10+
  • s: Union[str, None] = None for Python 3.9+
• For 3.7, 3.8, you still have Optional as an option, I think.
  • Why haven’t you upgraded to 3.9? We’re almost to 3.11, what’s the problem?!

Michael #3: cython-lint

• by Marco Gorelli
• A tool (and pre-commit hook) to lint Cython files, similar to how flake8 lints Python files, and works by parsing Cython's own AST (abstract syntax tree).
• Found quite a few nice clean-ups which could be applied on:
  • pandas
  • numpy
  • scikit-learn
  • cupy

Brian #4: difftastic - structural diff

• “Difftastic is a structural diff tool that understands syntax.”
• “Difftastic detects the language, parses the code, and then compares the syntax trees.”
• Interesting story about building difftastic
• For one off git diff replacement
  • use GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=difft git diff
  • or GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF="difft --syntax-highlight=off" git diff
• To always use difft with git, see https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/git.html

Extras

Brian:

• Oh My Git! - An open source game about learning Git!
• Python 3.11.0 is up to rc2

Michael:

• NextDNS

Joke: I mean, who’s wrong?