how to inherit docstrings?

[Carl Banks]

On Friday, June 10, 2011 2:51:20 AM UTC-7, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:36:53 -0700, Carl Banks wrote:
> > Put it this way: if Python doesn't automatically inherit docstrings, the
> > worst that can happen is missing information.  If Python does inherit
> > docstrings, it can lead to incorrect information.
> 
> This is no different from inheriting any other attribute. If your class 
> inherits "attribute", you might get an invalid value unless you take 
> steps to ensure it is a valid value. This failure mode doesn't cause us 
> to prohibit inheritance of attributes.

Ridiculous.  The docstring is an attribute of the function, not the class, which makes it very different from any other attribute.  Consider this:


class A(object):
    foo = SomeClass()


class B(A):
    foo = SomeOtherUnrelatedClass()


Would you have B.foo "inherit" all the attributes of A.foo that it doesn't define itself?  That's the analogous case to inheriting docstrings.


Carl Banks