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[Python-Dev] PEP 557: Data Classes

Eric V. Smith eric at trueblade.com
Mon Sep 11 09:51:11 EDT 2017 
On 9/11/17 9:43 AM, tds333 at mailbox.org wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> I have on question not addressed yet.
> The implementation is based on "__annotations__" where the type is specified.
> But "__annotations__" is not always filled. An interpreter version with special optimization
> could remove all __annotations__ for performance reasons. (Discussed in other threads)
>
> In this case the dataclass does not work or will there be a fallback?
>
> I know it is a little bit hypothetical because an interpreter with this optimization is
> not there yet. I am looking only in the future a bit.
> Asking this because type annotations are stated as completely optional for Python.
> And this use case will break this assumption.

Yes, if there are no __annotations__, then Data Classes would break. 
typing.NamedTuple has the same issue. We discussed it a little bit last 
week, but I don't think we came to any conclusions.

Since @dataclass ignores the value of the annotation (except for 
typing.ClassVar), it would continue to work if the type was present, buy 
maybe mapped to None or similar.

Eric.
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