Python 3 isinstance

[Lambert, David W (S&T)]

Please, why isn't a set permitted as the second argument to isinstance?

 

[Carl Banks]

Please, why isn't a set permitted as the second argument to isinstance?

The Python development team might be open to adding it if you were to
submit a patch. The use case is fairly obvious. I doubt any of them
would respond to a wishlist request, though.

As a workaround, you can just cast the set to a tuple like this:

isinstance(x,tuple(s))


Carl Banks

 

[Rhamphoryncus]

Please, why isn't a set permitted as the second argument to isinstance?

The real problem is it would be misleading. isinstance(a, myset)
suggests implementation like type(a) in myset, but it's really any
(isinstance(a, t) for t in myset).

If myset is arbitrarily large (as the examples suggest), and you're
checking on every call, the code would be so slow as to be considered
broken. This invalidates the use case.

The abc module in 2.6/3.0 is a possible alternative. Create an ABC
type, register each type in myset as part of it, then do isinstance(a,
MyABC). Internally the ABC will cache lookups, effectively getting
you back to O(1) cost.