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Python 201 - Interactively Learn Advanced Concepts in Python 3

Type Hints and Overloaded Functions

Explore how to apply type hints to overloaded functions in Python, enhancing code readability and understanding. Learn to clarify function arguments explicitly and improve code maintenance.

We'll cover the following...

One obvious place in our code that we think Type Hints would work great is overloaded functions. Let’s grab the overloaded adding function we worked on previously and take a look at how much better it will be with type hints.

Example of overloaded function

Here’s the original code:

Python 3.5
from functools import singledispatch
@singledispatch
def add(a, b):
    raise NotImplementedError('Unsupported type')
@add.register(int)
def _(a, b):
    print("First argument is of type ", type(a))
    print(a + b)
@add.register(str)
def _(a, b):
    print("First argument is of type ", type(a))
    print(a + b)
@add.register(list)
def _(a, b):
    print("First argument is of type ", type(a))
    print(a + b)
if __name__ == '__main__':
   add(1, 2)
   add('Python', 'Programming')
   add([1, 2, 3], [5, 6, 7])

This example’s first argument is pretty obvious if we understand how Python’s function ...