# Type inference and type annotations

## Type inference

Mypy considers the initial assignment as the definition of a variable. If you do not explicitly specify the type of the variable, mypy infers the type based on the static type of the value expression:

    i = 1           # Infer type "int" for i
    l = [1, 2]      # Infer type "List[int]" for l

Type inference is not used in dynamically typed functions (those without a function type annotation) — every local variable type defaults to `Any` in such functions. `Any` is discussed later in more detail.

## Explicit types for variables

You can override the inferred type of a variable by using a variable type annotation:

    from typing import Union

    x: Union[int, str] = 1

Without the type annotation, the type of `x` would be just `int`. We use an annotation to give it a more general type `Union[int, str]` (this type means that the value can be either an `int` or a `str`). Mypy checks that the type of the initializer is compatible with the declared type. The following example is not valid, since the initializer is a floating point number, and this is incompatible with the declared type:

    x: Union[int, str] = 1.1  # Error!

The variable annotation syntax is available starting from Python 3.6. In earlier Python versions, you can use a special comment after an assignment statement to declare the type of a variable:

    x = 1  # type: Union[int, str]

We’ll use both syntax variants in examples. The syntax variants are mostly interchangeable, but the variable annotation syntax allows defining the type of a variable without initialization, which is not possible with the comment syntax:

    x: str  # Declare type of 'x' without initialization

Note

The best way to think about this is that the type annotation sets the type of the variable, not the type of the expression. To force the type of an expression you can use `cast(<type>, <expression>)`.

## Explicit types for collections

The type checker cannot always infer the type of a list or a dictionary. This often arises when creating an empty list or dictionary and assigning it to a new variable that doesn’t have an explicit variable type. Here is an example where mypy can’t infer the type without some help:

    l = []  # Error: Need type annotation for 'l'

In these cases you can give the type explicitly using a type annotation:

    l: List[int] = []       # Create empty list with type List[int]
    d: Dict[str, int] = {}  # Create empty dictionary (str -> int)

Similarly, you can also give an explicit type when creating an empty set:

    s: Set[int] = set()

## Compatibility of container types

The following program generates a mypy error, since `List[int]` is not compatible with `List[object]`:

    def f(l: List[object], k: List[int]) -> None:
        l = k  # Type check error: incompatible types in assignment

The reason why the above assignment is disallowed is that allowing the assignment could result in non-int values stored in a list of `int`:

    def f(l: List[object], k: List[int]) -> None:
        l = k
        l.append('x')
        print(k[-1])  # Ouch; a string in List[int]

Other container types like `Dict` and `Set` behave similarly. We will discuss how you can work around this in Invariance vs covariance.

You can still run the above program; it prints `x`. This illustrates the fact that static types are used during type checking, but they do not affect the runtime behavior of programs. You can run programs with type check failures, which is often very handy when performing a large refactoring. Thus you can always ‘work around’ the type system, and it doesn’t really limit what you can do in your program.

## Context in type inference

Type inference is bidirectional and takes context into account. For example, the following is valid:

    def f(l: List[object]) -> None:
        l = [1, 2]  # Infer type List[object] for [1, 2], not List[int]

In an assignment, the type context is determined by the assignment target. In this case this is `l`, which has the type `List[object]`. The value expression `[1, 2]` is type checked in this context and given the type `List[object]`. In the previous example we introduced a new variable `l`, and here the type context was empty.

Declared argument types are also used for type context. In this program mypy knows that the empty list `[]` should have type `List[int]` based on the declared type of `arg` in `foo`:

    def foo(arg: List[int]) -> None:
        print('Items:', ''.join(str(a) for a in arg))

    foo([])  # OK

However, context only works within a single statement. Here mypy requires an annotation for the empty list, since the context would only be available in the following statement:

    def foo(arg: List[int]) -> None:
        print('Items:', ', '.join(arg))

    a = []  # Error: Need type annotation for 'a'
    foo(a)

Working around the issue is easy by adding a type annotation:

    ...
    a: List[int] = []  # OK
    foo(a)

## Declaring multiple variable types at a time

You can declare more than a single variable at a time, but only with a type comment. In order to nicely work with multiple assignment, you must give each variable a type separately:

    i, found = 0, False # type: int, bool

You can optionally use parentheses around the types, assignment targets and assigned expression:

    i, found = 0, False # type: (int, bool)      # OK
    (i, found) = 0, False # type: int, bool      # OK
    i, found = (0, False) # type: int, bool      # OK
    (i, found) = (0, False) # type: (int, bool)  # OK

## Starred expressions

In most cases, mypy can infer the type of starred expressions from the right-hand side of an assignment, but not always:

    a, *bs = 1, 2, 3   # OK
    p, q, *rs = 1, 2   # Error: Type of rs cannot be inferred

On first line, the type of `bs` is inferred to be `List[int]`. However, on the second line, mypy cannot infer the type of `rs`, because there is no right-hand side value for `rs` to infer the type from. In cases like these, the starred expression needs to be annotated with a starred type:

    p, q, *rs = 1, 2  # type: int, int, List[int]

Here, the type of `rs` is set to `List[int]`.