[Python-Dev] Would like to add Edward Loper as a Python developer (original) (raw)

John Belmonte john at neggie.net
Fri Aug 6 14:54:45 CEST 2004

Tim Peters wrote:

better support for writing "whole file" doctests (tutorial narratives liberally illustrated with Python examples -- Zope3 is finding these very helpful); and documenting all the additions that snuck into Python 2.3.

I noticed that the "whole file doctests" item didn't make it to the DoctestIdeas page. I was looking for more details about that.

I've found that for tutorial narratives, I really don't want to bother with expected output. For complex software, the output may not always be the same anyway. Also, it's not fun to manipulate input code that has prompts and is within a multi-line string. Syntax highlighting is not available, for one thing.

I've made my own tutorial generator. Given this input script:

 ## Double hash comments treated as meta comments and not output to
 ## the tutorial.

 """
 Triple-quote comments that start in the first column are treated as
 tutorial text.

 First we'll import some modules:
 """
 import os

 """
 Some code follows.  In addition to hash comments, and triple-quote
 comments not starting in the first column are preserved.  Note that
 code blocks such as functions must end with a blank line, just as
 is done in the interactive interpreter.
 """

 def foo():
     """foo description here"""
     print 'hello'  # be friendly

 #my_path = 'foo/bar'
 my_path = os.path.join('foo', 'bar')
 my_path
 foo()

the output is:

 Triple-quote comments that start in the first column are treated as
 tutorial text.

 First we'll import some modules:

     >>> import os

 Some code follows.  In addition to hash comments, and triple-quote
 comments not starting in the first column are preserved.  Note that
 code blocks such as functions must end with a blank line, just as
 is done in the interactive interpreter.

     >>> def foo():
     ...     """foo description here"""
     ...     print 'hello'  # be friendly
     ...
     >>> #my_path = 'foo/bar'
     >>> my_path = os.path.join('foo', 'bar')
     >>> my_path
     'foo/bar'
     >>> foo()
     hello

-John

-- http://giftfile.org/ :: giftfile project

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