[Python-Dev] readonly __doc__
Steven D'Aprano
steve at pearwood.info
Fri Oct 23 04:13:55 CEST 2009
On Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:39:53 am Brett Cannon wrote:
> > Is __doc__ not normal due to its general underscorishness, or is it
> > not normal because it isn't?
>
> I honestly don't follow that sentence. But __doc__ is special because
> of its use; documenting how to use of an object. In this case when
> you call something like help() on an instance of an object it skips
> the instance's value for __doc__ and goes straight to the defining
> class and stops there as you don't care how a subclass says to use
> itself as that is not what you are working with.
Classes don't normally inherit behaviour from their subclasses.
Presumably you meant superclass.
I expected __doc__ to be just like the other double-underscore objects:
lookup skips the instance and goes to the class, then follows the
normal rules of inheritance. Consequently I've just discovered that a
few of my classes, which I assumed inherited __doc__, don't actually
have a docstring. This has consequences beyond help(obj) not working as
expected: doctests which I thought were running aren't.
Magic behaviour like this is nasty because it breaks the Rule of Least
Astonishment. I thought I understood Python's object model and it's
rules of inheritance, but not only do double-underscore attributes
follow a different rule for inheritance than other attributes, but
__doc__ follows a different rule than other double-underscore
attributes.
--
Steven D'Aprano
More information about the Python-Dev
mailing list