wish: multiline comments

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Adrian Eyre writes:
 > I would like to see multiline comments possible in some future
 > version of Python.

Someone suggested:
 > Use multiline strings.

Adrian responded:
 > Not quite the same is it? A docstring will be put in the .pyc. A comment
 > won't.

  Only docstrings will be added to the .pyc, not *every* multiline
string.

class B:
	"""Okay. This is a short, 1-line docstring."""

	"""This is my 42-million line extended comment.  Pretend I
        really wrote a lot here.
        """
	pass

 > In one case, the .pyc generated is much bigger than the other. I not saying
 > that docstrings are bad, but they are NOT the same as comments, in that they
 > serve a purpose at runtime.

  Using multiple long strings allows for both a runtime-accessible
docstring, extensive documentation, and minimal .pyc size and runtime
memory consumption.  Tools that are being prototyped and discussed in
the Doc-SIG will be able to make use of multiple long docstring-like
strings, so this also provides some forward-compatibility.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives