[Python-ideas] A proliferation of (un-)Pythonically programmatic pragmas

[Terry Reedy]

On 11/13/2017 4:58 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 13 November 2017 at 20:43, MRAB <python-suppose that you could have suggest to them that they follow a convention
>> such as:
>>
>> 1. There can be multiple pragmas in a comment, separated by semicolons: if
>> you don't recognise it, skip past the semicolon.
>>
>> 2. A pragma can be prefixed with the name of the tool, e.g. "# flake8.noqa:
>> F401": if there's a prefix, but it's not yours, skip past the semicolon.
> 
> An informational PEP defining a common convention for pragma-style
> comments could standardise things. I'd suggest starting a discussion
> (somewhere?) with the development teams for the relevant projects
> (flake8, mypy, coverage...) with the intention of developing such a
> PEP that they could all support.

This seems like a good subject for an informational PEP.  It could and I 
think should include an implementation of the convention as a generator 
function with parameter 'tool' that yields (option, value) pairs for 
that tool.

Docstring directives might be considered for points to copy or not copy.
An example is  # doctest: +ELLIPSIS, +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE

'.' instead of ': ' to separate the tool prefix seems better for 
multiple tools, except that the latter works better for omitting the 
tool prefix when there are multiple options.

For binary options, '+' and '-' prefixes are much more compact than 
'=True' and '=False' suffixes.  This will be more important with 
multiple directives in one comment.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy