Sphinx Doctest: test the code without comparing the output.

[Luca Cerone]

Dear all,
I am writing the documentation for a Python package using Sphinx.

I have a problem when using doctest blocks in the documentation:
I couldn't manage to get doctest to run a command but completely ignoring
the output.

For example, how can I get a doctest like the following to run correctly?

.. doctest:: example_1

   >>> import random
   >>> x = random.uniform(0,100)
   >>> print str(x)
   #some directive here to completely ignore the output

Since I don't know the value of `x`, ideally in this doctest I only want
to test that the various commands are correct, regardless of
the output produced.

I have tried using the ELLIPSIS directive, but the problem is that the `...` 
are interpreted as line continuation rather than `any text`:

.. doctest:: example_2

   >>> import random
   >>> x = random.uniform(0,100)
   >>> print str(x) # doctest: +ELLIPSIS, +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
   ...

I don't know if there is a way to make Sphinx understand that I want to ignore the whole output. I think the easiest way to solve this, would be differentiating between the ellipsis sequence and the line continuation sequence, but I don't know how to do that.

I know that I could skip the execution of print(str(x)) but this is not what I want; I really would like the command to be executed the output ignored.
Can you point me to any solution for this issue?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help,
Cheers,
Luca