doctest.py is a lightweight "literate programming"-style testing framework for python. Released by Tim Peters in 1999 now part of the python standard library.

You define a test by executing some code in an interactive session, and then pasting it along with the output into a nearby docstring. When you run your module at the command-line, doctest executes each one of these code examples, compares the expected and actual output and provides a report.

See also UnitTests

A nice example of doctest use appears in the PythonCookBook. Doctest also appears prominently in a 2001 one article titled "Python Documentation Tips and Tricks".

DocTest (last edited 2008-11-15 14:00:00 by localhost)

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