36 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Python Commenting Code
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---
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Comments are used to annotate, describe, or explain code that is complex or difficult to understand. Python will intentionally ignore comments when it compiles to bytecode by the interpreter. <a href='https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#comments' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>`PEP 8`</a> has a section dealing with comments.They also increases the readablity of code by adding easy and descriptive language for better understanding.
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**Block** and **inline** comments start with a `#`, followed by a space before the comment:
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```python
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# This is a block comment.
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print('Hello world!') # This is an inline commment.
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```
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Python does not include a formal way to write multiline comments. Each line of a comment spanning multiple lines should start with `#` and a space:
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```python
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# This is the first line of a multiline comment.
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# This is the second line.
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```
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Another type of comment is the **docstring**, documented in <a href='https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>`PEP 257`</a>. Docstrings are a specific type of comment that becomes the `__doc__` attribute.
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For a string literal to be a docstring, it must start and end with `\"\"\"` and be the first statement of the module, function, class, or method definition it is documenting:
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```python
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class SomeClass():
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"""Summary line for SomeClass.
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More elaborate descriptions may require using a
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a multiline docstring.
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"""
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def method_a(self):
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"""Single line summary of method_a."""
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pass
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```
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String literals that start and end with `"""` that are not docstrings (not the first statement), can be used for multiline strings. They will not become `__doc__` attributes. If they are not assigned to a variable, they will not generate bytecode. There is some discussion about using them as multiline comments found <a href='http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7696924/multiline-comments-in-python' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>here</a>.
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