What's a call-tip to do?

[Tal Einat]

Hi all,

I just ran into this. In IDLE (Python 2.5), the call-tip for
itertools.count is:
"x.__init__(...) initializes x; see x.__class__.__doc__ for signature"

That's itertools.count.__init__.__doc__, while itertools.count.__doc__
is the informative doc-string ("DS" henceforth):
"""count([firstval]) --> count object

Return a count object whose .next() method returns consecutive
integers starting from zero or, if specified, from firstval."""


That seems very counter-intuitive to me - I would expect the DS for
__init__ to explain how to use the constructor.

IDLE's call-tip module obviously thinks so as it prefers the __init__
DS to the class's DS. IPython does the opposite as far as I can tell,
when I enter 'itertools.count?' it shows the class's DS, but shows
nothing for a custom class whose __init__ has a DS while the class
itself does not.

I'm wondering what a call-tip mechanism should do when a class and its
__init__ both have a DS. I'd be willing to work up a patch for IDLE's
call-tip module to work better in this regard, or for itertools and
similar classes in the stdlib, if needed.


- Tal Einat
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