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collections.abc.Set does not support Iterable s in some dunder methods #14659
Description
While their implementation even specifically checks whether operand is an instance of an Iterable (for example: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/c779f2324df06563b4ba3d70d0941e619ccaf5ff/Lib/_collections_abc.py#L628)
from collections.abc import Set
from typing import Iterable, Iterator
class S[T](Set[T]):
def __init__(self, s: Iterable[T] | None = None) -> None:
super().__init__()
self._set: set[T] = set(s) if s else set()
def __contains__(self, value: object) -> bool:
return value in self._set
def __iter__(self) -> Iterator[T]:
return iter(self._set)
def __len__(self) -> int:
return len(self._set)
def add(self, value: T) -> None:
self._set.add(value)
def discard(self, value: T) -> None:
self._set.discard(value)
def __repr__(self) -> str:
return self._set.__repr__()
s = S[int]((1,2,3))
print(s & [4])
print(s | ("4",))
print(s - [1])
print(s ^ ("1",))$ mypy t.py
t.py:29: error: Unsupported operand types for & ("S[int]" and "list[int]") [operator]
t.py:30: error: Unsupported operand types for | ("S[int]" and "tuple[str]") [operator]
t.py:31: error: Unsupported operand types for - ("S[int]" and "list[int]") [operator]
t.py:32: error: Unsupported operand types for ^ ("S[int]" and "tuple[str]") [operator]
Found 4 errors in 1 file (checked 1 source file)$ python3 t.py
set()
{1, 2, 3, '4'}
{2, 3}
{1, 2, 3, '1'}
Activity
srittau commentedon Sep 3, 2025
As the linked PR shows, there's a conflict between what the abstract base class supports and what the (virtual) set protocol (which should be represented by
collections.abc.Set) supports. It's unfortunate thatAbstractSetaccepts a broader interface than what its (virtual) sub-classes likesetdo, basically breaking the LSP.That's one of the reasons why these pseudo-protocols shouldn't be used in argument annotations (see also PyCQA/flake8-pyi#508 and PyCQA/flake8-pyi#525).
I'm unsure what the correct solution is, but I slightly prefer exploring the approach in #14653 together with enforcing not to use those pseudo-protocols in argument positions. At least the LSP violations are made explicit.