Inheriting methods but over-riding docstrings

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:55:11 -0300, Steven D'Aprano  
<steve at remove-this-cybersource.com.au> escribió:

> I have a series of subclasses that inherit methods from a base class, but
> I'd like them to have their own individual docstrings. The obvious
> solution (other than copy-and-paste) is this:
>
>
> class Base(object):
>     colour = "Blue"
>     def parrot(self):
>         """docstring for Base"""
>         return "Norwegian %s" % self.colour
>
>
> class SubClass(Base):
>     colour = "Red"
>     def parrot(self):
>         """docstring for Subclass"""
>         return super(Subclass, self).parrot()
>
>
> but that adds an awful lot of boilerplate to my subclasses. Are there any
> other good solutions to this problem?

Methods don't have docstrings; functions do. So one has to "clone" the  
function to set a new docstring.

<code>
def copy_function(fn, docstring):
     fn = getattr(fn, "im_func", fn) # accomodate unbound methods in 2.x
     function_type = type(lambda:0)
     newfn = function_type(fn.__code__, fn.__globals__, fn.__name__,  
fn.__defaults__, fn.__closure__)
     newfn.__doc__ = docstring
     return newfn

class Base(object):
     colour = "Blue"
     def parrot(self):
         """docstring for Base"""
         return "Norwegian %s" % self.colour

class SubClass(Base):
     colour = "Red"
     parrot = copy_function(Base.parrot, "docstring for Subclass")

</code>

py> x = Base()
py> print(x.parrot())
Norwegian Blue
py> print x.parrot.__doc__
docstring for Base
py> y = SubClass()
py> print(y.parrot())
Norwegian Red
py> print y.parrot.__doc__
docstring for Subclass

-- 
Gabriel Genellina