triple quoted strings as comments

[André]

dmh2000 wrote:
> I recently complained elsewhere that Python doesn't have multiline
> comments. i was told to use triple quoted strings to make multiline
> comments. My question is that since a triple quoted string is actually
> a language construct, does it use cause a runtime construction of a
> string which is then discarded, or is the runtime smart enough to see
> that it isn't used and so it doesn't construct it?
>
> example
>
> def fun(self):
>   """doc comment
>       comment line 2
>   """
>
>   x = 1
>   y = 2
>
>   """does this triple quoted string used as a  comment
>       cause something to happen at runtime beyond
>       just skipping over it? Such as allocation of memory for a string
>       or worse yet garbage collection? or not?
>   """
>   z = x + y
It seems to discard the second triple quoted comment (the first one is
kept around as a doc string).
I created two scripts, one with the second triple quoted string, the
other without.  The compiled version is *almost* the same (one byte
difference which, if I am not mistaken, comes from the different
filename embedded in the .pyc file).

30/01/2006  09:34 PM               327 triple.py
30/01/2006  09:35 PM               359 triple.pyc
30/01/2006  09:34 PM                96 triple2.py
30/01/2006  09:35 PM               358 triple2.pyc
André