WIP snapshot (git stash, 2026-07-11): paths.py lint-fix follow-on — preserved before branch cleanup (covers stash/20260711-2 too)

[thorwhalen]

Status: unattended assessment — a git stash snapshot, not a reviewed feature branch

This branch's own commit title is WIP on master: b0e3a86 fix: Pylance lint... (preserved stash) — a git stash push pushed to origin as an archival snapshot. No open PR, no linked issue, ~2 months stale against current master.

What it contains

Reformatting of dol/paths.py plus one new helper, _return_none_if_none_input — which has a malformed docstring: an example block's closing paren appears with no matching opening """, so the text reads as broken/truncated mid-docstring, followed directly by the real function body. Not close to landable as-is.

Note: origin/stash/20260711-2 is a byte-identical duplicate of this branch's dol/paths.py (confirmed via direct diff) — its content is fully preserved by this PR, so it does not get a separate preservation PR.

Why I'm not landing it

dol has many dependents fleet-wide; this diff is not internally consistent (broken docstring) and predates significant independent evolution of dol/paths.py.

What would make it clearly landable or droppable

Someone reviews whether _return_none_if_none_input is still wanted, fixes the docstring, and reconciles against current paths.py.

Closing immediately after opening — this PR exists only so the branch tip is recoverable from refs/pull/<N>/head after the remote branches are deleted (git-hygiene cleanup of long-idle unlanded branches).

[thorwhalen]

Closing to preserve the ref (refs/pull/103/head) while cleaning up long-idle stashed-WIP remote branches (this covers stash/20260711-1 and, by content, the byte-identical stash/20260711-2). See PR body for the full assessment.