Executing Doctests in Python: A Comprehensive Guide
Doctest is a module in the Python Standard Library that enables you to write tests within the documentation of your code-typically inside docstrings. These tests look like interactive Python sessions (as if they were run in a Python shell), and the doctest module verifies that the output matches the expected result. While doctests are generally simpler than unit tests written with unittest or pytest, they are powerful for checking that code examples in documentation remain correct over time.
This guide explores the various ways to execute doctests in Python, from running them via the command line to embedding them in code and running them programmatically.