Skip to content

invalid-length-return-type (PLE0303)#

Derived from the Pylint linter.

This rule is unstable and in preview. The --preview flag is required for use.

What it does#

Checks for __len__ implementations that return values other than a non-negative integer.

Why is this bad?#

The __len__ method should return a non-negative integer. Returning a different value may cause unexpected behavior.

Note: bool is a subclass of int, so it's technically valid for __len__ to return True or False. However, for consistency with other rules, Ruff will still raise when __len__ returns a bool.

Example#

class Foo:
    def __len__(self):
        return "2"

Use instead:

class Foo:
    def __len__(self):
        return 2

References#