On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:02:27 -0600, Terry Hancock wrote:
> On 9 Mar 2006 07:21:00 -0800
> "msoulier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > (and if you don't, you can quickly comment out regions
>> > by putting them inside a triple-quoted string.)
>>
>> Although that will use up memory, as opposed to a comment.
>
> Not really. Unless it is the first string in the block
> (class, function, module), it won't be assigned to anything,
> and will be immediately garbage-collected.
>
> It may consume space in the pyc file, I'm not sure.
I don't believe this is true. Unassigned strings other than the doc string
are not compiled into the code:
>>> def f(x):
... "this is a doc string"
... "but this isn't"
... return "hello world"
...
>>> dis.dis(f)
4 0 LOAD_CONST 1 ('hello world')
3 RETURN_VALUE
4 LOAD_CONST 2 (None)
7 RETURN_VALUE
Strangely enough, this is a local optimization that appears to have been
done only for strings:
>>> def g():
... 45
... return 55
...
>>> dis.dis(g)
2 0 LOAD_CONST 1 (45)
3 POP_TOP
3 4 LOAD_CONST 2 (55)
7 RETURN_VALUE
8 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
11 RETURN_VALUE
So you should feel free to use strings (triple-quoted or otherwise) as
documentation in your functions.
--
Steven.
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