Passing a bool to expect_references always results in a singular result

[MatthiasValvekens]

For the purpose of deciding whether verify(...) should return a list or a single result, the return line contains the following conditional:

return verify_results if self.config.expect_references > 1 else verify_results[0]

But if expect_references is a bool (which is allowed per the type signature) this conditional always evaluates to False, so only the first result is returned. This makes it difficult to work with signed documents in a context where the number of references is not fixed.

Since the docstring of expect_references states "if set to a non-integer, any number of references is accepted (otherwise a mismatch raises an error)", I don't think this is expected behaviour.

I would think replacing the above with this would result in a more intuitive return value:

return verify_results[0] if type(self.config.expect_references) is int and self.config.expect_references == 1 else verify_results

There's an argument that this is an API-breaking change, though (the test suite is also affected in at least one place).

WDYT?

[kislyuk]

You're right, the current behavior is inconsistent with the intent. Thanks for noticing this. I don't care too much about this being an API breaking change as the intent was clearly articulated in the docstring and I expect any resulting breakage to be failsafe.

Would you like to get a PR going?

[MatthiasValvekens]

@kislyuk see #279.