how to inherit docstrings?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:44:32 +1000, Ben Finney wrote:

> Eric Snow <ericsnowcurrently at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> AttributeError: attribute '__doc__' of 'type' objects is not writable
>>
>> That is on 3.3.
> 
> Well, that sucks :-(
> 
> Where can we see the discussion of that change before it was
> implemented?

It goes back to Python 2.2, when new style classes were first introduced.


[steve at sylar ~]$ python2.2
Python 2.2.3 (#1, Aug 12 2010, 01:08:27)
[GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-27)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> class K(object):
...     "foo"
...
>>> K.__doc__ = 'bar'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: attribute '__doc__' of 'type' objects is not writable


It's an unnecessary restriction, as far as I'm concerned, but an old one.



-- 
Steven