are docstrings for variables a bad idea?

[Diez B. Roggisch]

jelle wrote:

> 
> why is this ambigious at all?
> am i seriously overlooking something?


Yes. A full example is this:

import random

class A:
  """I'm A
  """
  pass

class B:
  """ I'm B
  """
  pass

def factory():
    if random.random() >= .5:
        return A()
    return B()


o = factory()


Now what is the IDE to show at o for the docstring?


The point is: pythons dynamic nature allows for _runtime_ checks of this
only. Now the special-case of classes can be worked around with a static
analyzer to some extent - because ususally, import statements are easy
enough to spot and resolve statically.

But using __import__ even that can be obfuscated. Now I'm not saying that
this should suppress all efforts to have IDEs more supportive. Yet a class
is a declaration, as is a method - can be parsed easily. But e.g. setting
an instance variable by means of setattr(self, name, value) instead of
self.<name> = value is perfectly legal, often wanted and totally opaque to
any IDE trying to give support.

Diez