Special typing form to define literal types (a.k.a. value types).
This form can be used to indicate to type checkers that the corresponding
variable or function parameter has a value equivalent to the provided
literal (or one of several literals)::
def validate_simple(data: Any) -> Literal[True]: # always returns True
...
MODE = Literal['r', 'rb', 'w', 'wb']
def open_helper(file: str, mode: MODE) -> str:
...
open_helper('/some/path', 'r') # Passes type check
open_helper('/other/path', 'typo') # Error in type checker
Literal[...] cannot be subclassed. At runtime, an arbitrary value
is allowed as type argument to Literal[...], but type checkers may
impose restrictions.
3.9.1: Literal now de-duplicates parameters. Equality comparisons of Literal objects are no longer order dependent. Literal objects will now raise a TypeError exception during equality comparisons if one of their parameters are not hashable.