[docs] [issue24079] xml.etree.ElementTree.Element.text does not conform to the documentation

[Martin Panter]

Martin Panter added the comment:

Another problem with tostring() is that it seems you have to call it with encoding="unicode". Perhaps it would be better to suggest code like "".join(element.itertext())?

I would also improve on Jérôme’s version by making the None case more explicit. And perhaps both attributes can be defined together, rather than giving a half-hearted definition linking between them:

.. attribute:: text
.. attribute:: tail

   The *text* attribute holds any text between the element's begin tag and the next tag. The *tail* attribute holds any text between the element's end tag and the next tag. These attributes are set to ``None`` if there is no text. For example, in the XML data ``<a><b>1<c>2<d/>3</c></b>4</a>``, the *a* element has ``None`` for both *text* and *tail* attributes, the *b* element has *text* ``"1"`` and *tail* ``"4"``, the *c* element has *text* ``"2"`` and *tail* ``None``, the *d* element has *text* ``None`` and *tail* ``"3"``.
   
   To collect the inner text of an element, use :meth:`itertext`, for example ``"".join(element.itertext())``.
   
   Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.

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nosy: +vadmium

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue24079>
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