There was a thread similar to this almost two weeks ago. While the
advantages of using docstrings is obvious, I remember commenting about
some of the typically minor disadvantages of docstrings which seem
consistent with your belief that hash-sign comments might be better
suited for stand-alone applications:
---
The only perceived disadvantages that I'm aware of occur when you don't
use the -OO flag. Docstrings end up in frozen executables and .pyc
files, visible through the use of the "strings" command (which is a
problem for people who think the information is hidden from the binary
file like a comment). The binary files are also ever so slightly larger
when docstrings are used instead of comments. However, using -OO
removes docstrings in addition to applying optimizations...the frozen
executable or resulting .pyo files have no docstrings and are a bit smaller.
---
If you use a hash-sign comment, you're guaranteed that it won't be in
the binaries, which is a big advantage to some if that comment contains
highly sensitive documentation.
---
-Rick Ratzel
Sridhar R wrote:
When writing a python library, we can use docstrings for methods and
functions that are part of API. But what about comments for non-API
objects or python application code?
For applications, docstrings are not really much useful. Instead
language comments are prefered for them.
Language comments (starting with #) are usually considered to be a
little more readable than docstrings (when reading the source code for
understanding it).
So for non-API objects language comments will be prefered.
Thoughts?
