pydoc preference for triple double over triple single quotes -- any reason?

[Brian van den Broek]

Hi all,

I'm posting partly so my problem and solution might be more easily 
found by google, and partly out of mere curiosity.

I've just spent a frustrating bit of time figuring out why pydoc 
didn't extract a description from my module docstrings. Even though I 
had a well formed docstring (one line, followed by a blank line, 
followed by the rest of the docstring), when I ran Module docs, my 
modules showed up as having "no description". ("Module docs" referring 
to the shortcut installed on Windows that launches the pydoc server.)

It turns out that I was using '''triple single quotes''' and pydoc 
only pulls a description out from module docstrings that are formatted 
in """triple double quotes""". I've poked about with google, and 
cannot find any explanation of why pydoc should treat the two cases 
differently. Anyone have an idea?

I do see that both <http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html> -- Style 
Guide for Python Code and <http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0257.html> 
-- Docstring Conventions suggest triple double, so I guess it is my 
fault. But still, those PEP's have the tone of suggestions, and since 
the two quoting schemes are semantically equivalent . . .

I do prefer the look of triple-single, but oh well. My attempts to 
google for an answer didn't come up with anything, so perhaps this 
post will help someone else, if nothing else :-)

Best to all,

Brian vdB