Useless expressions
Ben Finney
ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Tue Mar 29 03:35:34 EDT 2016
Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> writes:
> On Monday 28 March 2016 23:18, BartC wrote:
>
> > (There are also docstrings, but until yesterday I didn't even know
> > they were also expressions. Wikipedia says this:
> >
> > "Python docstrings appear as a string literal (not an expression) as
> > the first statement following the definition of functions..."
> >
> > so their status is a little unclear.
Thanks for raising this, Bart.
> I think what Wikipedia means is that you cannot use an expression that
> evaluates to a string as a docstring
I agree. I have edited that section of the article, hopefully it is now
clearer:
Python
The common practice, of documenting a code object at the head of its
definition, is captured by the addition of docstring syntax in the
Python language.
The docstring for a Python code object (a module, class, or
function) is the first statement of that code object, immediately
following the definition (the 'def' or 'class' statement). The
statement must be a bare string literal, not any other kind of
expression. The docstring for the code object is available on that
code object's '__doc__' attribute.
[…]
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docstring#Python>
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Ben Finney
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