[Doc-SIG] PEP-0216

[Moshe Zadka]

On Sat, 11 Nov 2000, Mark Hammond wrote:

> Yep - my mistake was following that hyperlink rather than looking at my file
> system.  The cost of convenience :-)

Sorry...

> (b) I don't really buy - it appears the exact same problem to me.  The
> docstring should say "a regular file or a StringIO.StringIO() object".  If
> the user took you literally, and tried to create a "StringIO" object, it
> would fail - presumably your module defines no such object.

Perhaps it's a bad example, but I remember some good cases being made
the other time around we discussed it: there *must* be a way of overriding
the guesser. Your ideas about how to make the guesser better deserve
a mention in the PEP, as well as some other ideas which were raised
in the IPC8 meeting and later in the doc-sig

> This gives you very pretty documentation, readable, clear
> plain-text, and a pattern that will be correct the vast majority of cases.

In case this wasn't clear, the guesser is supposed to be right 99% of
the cases. For the 1% in which Python trickery so deep is employed,
the author should override the guesser.
--
Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il> -- 95855124
http://advogato.org/person/moshez