[Python-Dev] Method signatures in the datetime module documentation

[Martin Panter]

On 4 August 2016 at 00:24, Alexander Belopolsky
<alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Alexander Belopolsky
> <alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> How should I present the signature of the new replace method in the
>> documentation?
>
> Having not seeing any replies, let me make a proposal:
>
> datetime.replace(hour=self.hour, minute=self.minute, second=self.second,
>     microsecond=self.microsecond, tzinfo=self.tzinfo, *, fold=self.fold)
>
> while not a valid method signature, this seems to correctly reflect
> what replace() does.

Does that mean replace() accepts most of its arguments as either
positional or keyword arguments? IMO when the documentation uses the
“name=default” notation, it implies keyword argument support, while
the [name] notation implies only supporting a positional argument. If
replace() actually supported these keywords all along, then I am happy
with this proposal.

There are a few bug reports that may be relevant:

https://bugs.python.org/issue13386: notation where there is no simple
default value
https://bugs.python.org/issue23738: notation for defaults for
positional-only parameters