Usually slices are created with integers such as `foo[1:5]`. However slices are
not restricted to having integers for the `start, stop, step` parameters and
thus can be used with any types. The most prominent example is probably
`pandas` which allows slicing by index (and the index can be `str` for example):
df = pd.DataFrame([[0], [1], [2]], index=list('abc'), columns=['x'])
print(df.loc['a':'b']) # The first two items, 'a' and 'b' inclusive.
In one of my projects I also employed the slice syntax in a similar way.
Sometimes more fine-grained control is desired, e.g. only allowing `str` slices
and not `int` slices. For that purpose it would be constructive to explicitly
indicate the type:
class Foo:
def __getitem__(self, index: Slice[str]):
pass
foo = Foo()
foo[1:5] # type checker complains
foo['foo':'bar'] # no complaints here
The syntax would be somewhat similar to `slice` itself, with the difference
that `Slice[T]` is similar to `Slice[T, T]`, i.e. specifying both the `start`
and `stop` type.
Now with [PEP
585](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0585/#importing-of-typing) using
`slice` directly in annotations seems to be the preferred way, so I'm not even
sure whether it is realistic to ask for such a new type being added to
`typing`? Then, what else would it require for this idea to become part of the
language (if accepted)?
Best regards,
Dominik
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