doctest exceptoin pickiness (was RE: eval(repr(x)) == x)

[Alex Martelli]

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1012184626.10941.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> > repr being inverse.  The *only* p.i.t.a with doctest is that with every
> > Python release the exact wording of some exception or other changes,
>
> Also pretty common for AttributeErrors to turn into TypeErrors, and vice
> versa (alas -- it's a fuzzy distinction!).

I wouldn't mind having to handle THAT with a try/except in the
docstring example -- it may be "pretty common", but my impression
is that it bites me with a frequency an order of magnitude rarer
than the more innocuous "change wording in error message" issue.


> > very impractical for test suites intended to survive from one Python
> > version to the next, or work across two Python versions.  But that
> > wouldn't be fixed by any change to repr...
>
> Guido whines about this too, and I always tell him to grow up <wink>.
Since
> doctest's initial and still-best purpose is to verify examples in
> docstrings, and users (rightfully) call it "a bug" when canned examples
> clash with what they actually see, doctest deliberately complains when a
> canned error message gets out of synch with reality.  It would be easy to
> relax that, but I wouldn't want to make tolerance the default behavior.

I'd be perfectly happy with using some switch or option, with doctest
defaulting to its current must-match-identically behavior (which, as you
say, may well be optimal for its "initial and still-best purpose") but
easily switched into something a little bit more tolerant (which may be
optimal for its "current and secondary purpose" of making it easy and
fun, rather than a chore, to develop unit tests).


> Ensuring just "does or does not raise *some* exception" would be the
easiest
> alternative to provide.  An insane extension could invent markup tagging

I'd be quite happy with a "slightly tolerant mode" that matches the
type but not necessarily the stringvalue of the exception.


> change over time?)!  For doctest's primary purpose, making life difficult
> when fed poor examples is "a feature".

Right.  But for its secondary purpose (which is in fact the one I use
it and proselitize it for) it's a "minor to medium" annoyance instead.


Alex