Misleading issue text when return type doesn't match type annotation

[tusharsadhwani]

Bug Report

When you return a function call like return list(...), return dict(...), and the type doesn't match the return annotation, the error message says that list(...) is not valid code.

To Reproduce

def foo() -> list[int]:
    tup = ("a", "b", "c")
    return list(tup)

Expected Behavior

I was expecting mypy to tell me that the type annotation doesn't match the return type.

Instead it says that the arguments to list() are wrong, i.e. list doesn't take this type.

Like so:

$ mypy asd.py
asd.py:3: error: Incompatible return value type (got "List[str]", expected "List[int]")  [return-value]
Found 1 error in 1 file (checked 1 source file)

Actual Behavior

$ mypy asd.py 
asd.py:3: error: Argument 1 to "list" has incompatible type "Tuple[str, str, str]"; expected "Iterable[int]"  [arg-type]
Found 1 error in 1 file (checked 1 source file)

I think this is misleading.

Your Environment

• Mypy version used: v1.0.1
• Mypy command-line flags: N/A
• Mypy configuration options from mypy.ini (and other config files): N/A
• Python version used: 3.10.9

[JukkaL]

Removing the bug label, since the error message is consistent with how type inference is designed to work in mypy, but I agree that this can be confusing and a generating a more useful error message would be nice.