On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <mailman.6584.1391950328.18130.python-l...@python.org>,
> bagrat lazaryan <bagra...@live.com> wrote:
>
>> pep 257 -- docstring conventions, as well as a myriad of books and other
>> resources, recommend documenting a function's or method's effect as a command
>> ("do this", "return that"), not as a description ("does this", "returns
>> that"). what's the logic behind this recommendation?
>>
>> bagratte
>
> Methods are verbs, and should be described as such. If I had:
>
> class Sheep:
> def fly(self):
> "Plummet to the ground."
>
> I'm defining the action the verb performs. If, on the other hand, I had:
>
> class Sheep:
> def fly(self):
> "Plummets to the ground"
>
> I'm no longer describing the action of flying, I'm describing what the
> sheep does when it attempts to perform that action.
This can also be seen with a (monolingual) dictionary. For example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+fly (that’s actually from the
New Oxford American Dictionary):
fly, verb: 1. move through the air under control. 2. move or be hurled
quickly through the air.
Those could be valid docstrings (if sheep could fly, of course…) — so,
in other words, act as if you were writing a dictionary and not Python
code.
--
Chris “Kwpolska” Warrick <http://kwpolska.tk>
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