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From: Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 02:26:48 -0800
Subject: Re: Python 3 May Become Relevant Now
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On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 1:58 AM, Jean-Michel Pichavant
<jeanmichel@sequans.com> wrote:
> But if I get things right, with python 3.5 type hint checker, I'd be screwed, as it is spefificaly designed to track this kind of "problem".
> What's the use of None then ? Any method returning None can only return None or suffer the type checker retribution.
>
> I don't get it.

This is where you would use optional types. Optional[List[X]] is a
shorthand for the type Union[List[X], None].

In fact static type checking can be quite useful in this sort of case.
If you return Optional[List[X]] in one place, and you have some other
method that takes in the value but simply indicates that it takes
List[X], then the static checker will flag that as an error, and
you'll know that a part of your code likely isn't handling the None
case correctly.