Python doctest: Skip entire block?

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I've got a Python module with docstrings in class methods, and a real-world example in the module docstring. The distinction is that the method-docstrings have been carefully crafted to be utterly repeatable tests, while the real-world example is just a copy'n'paste of the history from a Linux shell - which happened to invoke the python interpreter.

E.g.

"""
Real-world example:

# python2.5
Python 2.5 (release25-maint, Jul 20 2008, 20:47:25)
[GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from packagename import module
>>> module.show_real_world_usage()
'Hello world!'
"""

class SomeClass(object):
    def someMethod(self):
        """
        >>> 1 == 1
        True
        """

I want to run the doctest in SomeClass.someMethod, but not in the module's docstrings.

Doctest's +SKIP directive only works per line, which would mean adding 10s of lines to my real-world example. Ugly!

Is there a way to make doctest skip an entire block? A bit like <!-- ... --> in HTML?

5 Answers

A small workaround building upon RobM's answer preserves the display/formatting by starting the example with a >>> like that:

""" 
>>>
>> from packagename import module 
>> module.show_real_world_usage() 
'Hello world!' 
"""

I went for the # doctest: +SKIP on every line

def doc_test_test():
    """Doc tests
    
    Examples:
        
        >>> do_something1() # doctest: +SKIP
        >>> do_something2() # doctest: +SKIP
        >>> do_something3() # doctest: +SKIP
    """
    pass
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