Stefan Behnel added the comment:
I agree that the wording in the documentation isn't great:
"""
text
The text attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with the
element. As the name implies this attribute is usually a string but may be any
application-specific object. If the element is created from an XML file the
attribute will contain any text found between the element tags.
tail
The tail attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with the
element. This attribute is usually a string but may be any application-specific
object. If the element is created from an XML file the attribute will contain
any text found after the element’s end tag and before the next tag.
"""
Special cases that no-one uses (sticking non-string objects into text/tail) are
given too much space and the difference isn't explained as needed.
Since the distinction between text and tail is a (great but) rather special
feature of ElementTree, it needs to be given more room in the docs.
Proposal:
"""
text
The text attribute holds the immediate text content of the element. It
contains any text found up to either the closing tag if the element has no
children, or the next opening child tag within the element. For text following
an element, see the `tail` attribute. To collect the entire text content of a
subtree, see `tostring`. Applications may store arbitrary objects in this
attribute.
tail
The tail attribute holds any text that directly follows the element. For
example, in a document like ``<a>Text<b/>BTail<c/>CTail</a>``, the `text`
attribute of the ``a`` element holds the string "Text", and the tail attributes
of ``b`` and ``c`` hold the strings "BTail" and "CTail" respectively.
Applications may store arbitrary objects in this attribute.
"""
----------
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<http://bugs.python.org/issue24079>
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