[Python-projects] W0613 false positives on inherited arguments

[Maarten ter Huurne]

Hi,

Please look at the method arguments in the following program:

===
class Base(object):

	def inherited(self, aa, ab, ac):
		raise NotImplementedError

class Sub(Base):

	def inherited(self, aa, ab, ac):
		return aa

	def newmethod(self, ax, ay):
		print ax
===

pylint will warn about 3 unused arguments:
===
W0613:  8:Sub.inherited: Unused argument 'ab'                                        
W0613:  8:Sub.inherited: Unused argument 'ac'                                        
W0613: 11:Sub.newmethod: Unused argument 'ay'                                        
===

Of these, the warning for "ay" is desired. The warnings for "ab" and "ac" 
are most likely false positives though, because there could be another 
subclass that overrides the same method and does use the arguments:

===
class Sub2(Base):

	def inherited(self, aa, ab, ac):
		return aa + ab + ac
===

So I propose to not report W0613 for inherited arguments. I made a patch 
that implements this proposal, it is attached. The patch might need some 
cleaning up, but I hope it offers a useful starting point.

Bye,
		Maarten

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