[Tim]
Not to my mind. doctest is intentionally picky about exact matches, for reasons explained earlier. If the docs for a thing say "integer division or modulo by zero" is expected, but running it says something else, the docs are wrong and doctest's primary *purpose* is to point that out loudly.
[Guido]
Of course, this is means that *if* you use doctest, all authoritative docs should be in the docstring, and not elsewhere.
I don't know why you would reach that conclusion. My own Python work in years past had overwhelmingly little to do with anything in the Python distribution, and I surely did put all my docs in my modules. It was my only realistic choice, and doctest grew in part out of that "gotta put everything in one file, cuz one file is all I got" way of working. By allowing to put the docs for a thing right next to the tests for a thing right next to the code for a thing, doctest changed the *nature* of that compromise from a burden to a relative joy. Doesn't mean the docs couldn't or shouldn't be elsewhere, though, unless you assume that only the "authoritative docs" need to be accurate (I prefer that all docs tell the truth <wink>). I know some people have adapted the guts of doctest to ensuring that their LaTeX and/or HTML Python examples work as advertised too. Cool! The Python Tutorial is eternally out of synch in little ways with what the matching release actually does.
Which brings us back to the eternal question of how to indicate mark-up in docstrings.
I announced a few years ago I was done waiting for mark-up to reach consensus, and was going to just go ahead and write useful docstrings regardless. Never had cause to regret that -- mark-up is the tail wagging the dog, and I don't know why people tolerate it (well, yes I do: "but there's no mark-up defined!" is an excuse to put off writing decent docs! but you really don't need six levels of nested lists-- or even one --to get 99% of the info across).
Is everything connected to everything?
when-it's-convenient-to-believe-it-and-a-few-times-even-when-not-ly y'rs - tim