[IPython-dev] let ipython return parent's class method docstring automatically

[Ondrej Certik]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:59 PM, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Ondrej Certik <ondrej at certik.cz> wrote:
>
>> The partent class, in this case Basic, has a nice docstring. The thing
>> is, that the Basic class has the docstring, but the child classes
>> don't (obviously, because it'd be the same).
>> What is the best way to handle this?
>>
>> We can see two possibilities:
>>
>> 1) patch ipython to return parent's (or parent's parent's) docstring.
>> I checked that and the patch would be just a few lines of code in
>> OInspect.py
>
> I think this is a fairly generic problem, that of children who
> override parent  methods but don't rewrite the docstrings.  So I'd be
> happy with ipython making the user's life easier out of the box,
> though I think in this case we should say something like:
>
> Docstring : [extracted from parent class foo.bar.baz]
> blah...
>
> so users are aware that they're reading the parent's docstring, just
> in case there are small inconsistencies the developer forgot to
> document.
>
> How does this sound?

I'll send a patch.

Ondrej