Multi version support for Python doctests

Question

I am writing my doctests like this:

>>> some_function(a=1, b=2)
{u\'id\': u\'123\', u\'name\': u\'abc\'}

This works fine for Pytho

Answer 1

I run into the same issue with doctests in NLTK; it was solved by using a custom doctest output checker (that treats u'foo' and 'foo' the same) which is installed by a custom nose plugin: https://github.com/nltk/nltk/blob/develop/nltk/test/doctest_nose_plugin.py

This solution is not pretty, but it works quite well (there are about 0.5 megabytes of doctests in NLTK) and it doesn't make doctests less readable.

EDIT: found a simplified standalone version of this nose plugin: https://github.com/gnublade/doctest-ignore-unicode