On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 08:48 pm, Mario Figueiredo wrote: > Sorry for the late reply. We experienced a 3 day blackout following > one of the most amazing thunderstorms I've witnessed in my life.
Wow. Where abouts are you? Apart from the blackout, did you get through it alright? More below... > On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 22:49:49 +1100, Steven D'Aprano > <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: [...] >>Even if there was support from the compiler to extract the docstring, >>where would it be stored? Consider: >> >>spam = None >>"""Spammy goodness.""" >>eggs = None >>"""Scrambled, not fried.""" >> >>There's only one None object, and even if it could take a docstring (and >>it can't), which docstring would it get? Presumably the second, which >>would make help(spam) confusing, but when we say eggs = 23 the docstring >>would disappear too. > > This is a byproduct of me still thinking in terms of C variables. When > I first read that paragraph of yours, it didn't make sense to me -- > "What is he talking about? I'm documenting the spam and eggs > identifiers, not the None object". > > But when I was trying to reply to you by mounting a case around > writing directly to the __doc__ attribute of the spam and eggs > identifiers, the python shell was quick to make me realized my > foolishness, and I remembered about Python variables not being the > same as C variables. Yes, that's exactly it! Some people prefer to say "Python has no variables, it has name bindings". I think that it's better to say that Python's variables are not *like* C or Pascal variables, rather than invent a distinction between name bindings and variables. Name bindings are a type of variable. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
