What is the standard Python docstring format

Question

I have seen a few different styles of writing docstrings in Python, is there an official or "agreed-upon" style?

Answer 1

The Google style guide contains an excellent Python style guide. It includes conventions for readable docstring syntax that offers better guidance than PEP-257. For example:

def square_root(n):
    """Calculate the square root of a number.

    Args:
        n: the number to get the square root of.
    Returns:
        the square root of n.
    Raises:
        TypeError: if n is not a number.
        ValueError: if n is negative.

    """
    pass

I like to extend this to also include type information in the arguments, as described in this Sphinx documentation tutorial. For example:

def add_value(self, value):
    """Add a new value.

       Args:
           value (str): the value to add.
    """
    pass