Type improvement

[1himan]

Reference issue - Fixes #13597.

Fixes the type error:

which previously would've looked like:

[1himan]

Okay I only see this now. There's already a typing utility in the repo. Would it be better if we add more elaborated types there? and import the type hints from there or mne.typing as suggested by @larsoner ?

Just say so and I'll start working it 😉.

[larsoner]

There was at one point a lot of discussion of types and I don't offhand remember the outcomes. See for example #8218 (comment)

[1himan]

hey @scott-huberty for simplicity(only for right now), I've done this:
verbose: bool | str | int | None = None,

I see that you gave the notion about creatin a new typing module here - but there already exists one but there's nothing defined in there :)
What are your thoughts on this?

[scott-huberty]

hey @scott-huberty for simplicity(only for right now), I've done this: verbose: bool | str | int | None = None,

I see that you gave the notion about creatin a new typing module here - but there already exists one but there's nothing defined in there :) What are your thoughts on this?

I think that for type annotations to be useful they need to be correct, so that's why we suggested something like VerboseT: TypeAlias = None | bool | Literal["debug", "info", "warning", "error"] | int (note the use of Literal instead of just saying any str is valid, which it isn't). Also, by creating a type alias now, we save another dev the trouble in the future! (verbose parameters exist all over the mne codebase, so the chances that a dev will re-use our type hint are high).

As for whether to put this in mne.utils._typing or in a new module named mne.typing, I don't have a strong opinion. I guess it can be placed in the existing private module and we can always migrate things to a new public module later.

Also, it might be worth reading the thread that Eric linked above, to see what other ideas/opinions have been shared.