[Python-Dev] Deprecate doctest?

[Aahz]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> David Goodger wrote:
>>
>>This backport checkin (Oct 5 2002) changed the exception text between
>>2.2.1:
>>
>>    >>> int(None)
>>    Traceback (most recent call last):
>>      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>>    TypeError: object can't be converted to int
>>
>>and 2.2.2 (last line):
>>
>>    >>> int(None)
>>    Traceback (most recent call last):
>>      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>>    TypeError: int() argument must be a string or a number
>>
>>Should this change have been backported to 2.2.2 from the 2.3
>>codebase?
>>
>>Patrick O'Brien brought this to my attention.  He found a test in the
>>Docutils test suite that broke under 2.2.2. 
> 
> How can a test break when you change the error message text ? I'd
> say that the test was broken: you should never rely on a particular
> message text since these can and do change rather often.

That's tricky, given that doctest is in the standard library, and that's
exactly what doctest does.  Are you advocating deprecating doctest?
-- 
Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

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