can you define doc directly?

Question

I would like my docstring to be an f-string to put information on, but if I try to do that it isn't showed when you type foo.__doc__ or help(foo), so I tried the following:

used .format() which didn't register as a docstring

tried to do self.__doc__ = f"""...""", but it still didn't work:

def foo():
    self.__doc__ = f"""foo() is a function."""
    pass

I read on a site that it was possible to define the docstring without just putting a docstring at the beginning but it didn't say how.

How shall I start?

You can assign to the doc on a class using `classname.__doc__ = "whatever"`, and then `help(classname)` will include that string. Same with an instance of a class. Same with a function. What is the thing that you are trying to document? — khelwood, Mar 11 '21 at 16:46
What exactly did you try that didn't work? Can you post a [mre]? — khelwood, Mar 11 '21 at 16:51
@khelwood I was writing what the function did, with some colours...! — Arale, Mar 11 '21 at 16:51
`self` doesn't mean anything in your `foo` function. But you can just assign to `foo.__doc__`. — khelwood, Mar 11 '21 at 17:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '21 at 16:49

__doc__ is just an attribute. You can define it after defining your class / function / method :

def func():
    pass

func.__doc__ = f"My function doc using fstring"

class Myclass:

    def my_method():
        pass

    my_method.__doc__ = f"My method doc using string"

Myclass.__doc__ = f"My class doc using fstring"

Calling help() on either func, MyClass or my_method will display your string.

can you define __doc__ directly?

1 Answers1

can you define doc directly?