Summary -- Release highlights¶

New checkers¶

import-outside-toplevel

This check warns when modules are imported from places other than a module toplevel, e.g. inside a function or a class.
Added a new check, consider-using-sys-exit

This check is emitted when we detect that a quit() or exit() is invoked instead of sys.exit(), which is the preferred way of exiting in program.

Closes #2925
Added a new check, arguments-out-of-order

This check warns if you have arguments with names that match those in a function's signature but you are passing them in to the function in a different order.

Closes #2975
Added new checks, no-else-break and no-else-continue

These checks highlight unnecessary else and elif blocks after break and continue statements.

Closes #2327
Added unnecessary-comprehension that detects unnecessary comprehensions.

This check is emitted when pylint finds list-, set- or dict-comprehensions, that are unnecessary and can be rewritten with the list-, set- or dict-constructors.

Closes #2905
Added a new check, invalid-overridden-method

This check is emitted when we detect that a method is overridden as a property or a property is overridden as a method. This can indicate a bug in the application code that will trigger a runtime error.

Closes #2670
Added a new check, redeclared-assigned-name

This check is emitted when pylint detects that a name was assigned one or multiple times in the same assignment, which indicate a potential bug.

Closes #2898
Added a new check, self-assigning-variable

This check is emitted when we detect that a variable is assigned to itself, which might indicate a potential bug in the code application.

For example, the following would raise this warning:
```
def new_a(attr, attr2):
  a_inst = Aclass()
  a_inst.attr2 = attr2
  # should be: a_inst.attr = attr, but have a typo
  attr = attr
  return a_inst
```
Closes #2930
Added a new check property-with-parameters which detects when a property has more than a single argument.

Closes #3006
Added subprocess-run-check to handle subprocess.run without explicitly set check keyword.

Closes #2848
We added a new check message dict-iter-missing-items. This is emitted when trying to iterate through a dict in a for loop without calling its .items() method.

Closes #2761
We added a new check message missing-parentheses-for-call-in-test. This is emitted in case a call to a function is made inside a test but it misses parentheses.
A new check class-variable-slots-conflict was added.

This check is emitted when pylint finds a class variable that conflicts with a slot name, which would raise a ValueError at runtime.

For example, the following would raise an error:
```
class A:
    __slots__ = ('first', 'second')
    first = 1
```
A new check preferred-module was added.

This check is emitted when pylint finds an imported module that has a preferred replacement listed in preferred-modules.

For example, you can set the preferred modules as xml:defusedxml,json:ujson to make pylint suggest using defusedxml instead of xml and ujson rather than json.
A new extension broad_try_clause was added.

This extension enforces a configurable maximum number of statements inside of a try clause. This facilitates enforcing PEP 8's guidelines about try / except statements and the amount of code in the try clause.

You can enable this extension using --load-plugins=pylint.extensions.broad_try_clause and you can configure the amount of statements in a try statement using --max-try-statements.

Other Changes¶

Don't emit protected-access when a single underscore prefixed attribute is used inside a special method

Closes #1802
len-as-condition now only fires when a len(x) call is made without an explicit comparison.

The message and description accompanying this checker has been changed reflect this new behavior, by explicitly asking to either rely on the fact that empty sequence are false or to compare the length with a scalar.

OK:
```
if len(x) == 0:
  pass

while not len(x) == 0:
  pass

assert len(x) > 5, message
```
KO:
```
if not len(x):
  pass

while len(x) and other_cond:
  pass

assert len(x), message
```
A file is now read from stdin if the --from-stdin flag is used on the command line. In addition to the --from-stdin flag a (single) file name needs to be specified on the command line, which is needed for the report.
The checker for ungrouped imports is now more permissive.

The import can now be sorted alphabetically by import style. This makes pylint compatible with isort.

The following imports do not trigger an ungrouped-imports anymore

import unittest
import zipfile
from unittest import TestCase
from unittest.mock import MagicMock

The checker for missing return documentation is now more flexible.

The following does not trigger a missing-return-doc anymore

def my_func(self):
    """This is a docstring.

    Returns
    -------
    :obj:`list` of :obj:`str`
        List of strings
    """
    return ["hi", "bye"] #@

signature-mutators CLI and config option was added.

With this option, users can choose to ignore too-many-function-args, unexpected-keyword-arg, and no-value-for-parameter for functions decorated with decorators that change the signature of a decorated function.

For example a test may want to make use of hypothesis. Adding hypothesis.extra.numpy.arrays to signature_mutators would mean that no-value-for-parameter would not be raised for:

@given(img=arrays(dtype=np.float32, shape=(3, 3, 3, 3)))
def test_image(img):
    ...

Allow the option of f-strings as a valid logging string formatting method.

logging-fstring--interpolation has been merged into logging-format-interpolation to allow the logging-format-style option to control which logging string format style is valid. To allow this, a new fstr value is valid for the logging-format-style option.

--list-msgs-enabled command was added.

When enabling/disabling several messages and groups in a config file, it can be unclear which messages are actually enabled and which are disabled. This new command produces the final resolved lists of enabled/disabled messages, sorted by symbol but with the ID provided for use with --help-msg.