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non-imperative-mood (D401)

Added in v0.0.228 · Related issues · View source

Derived from the pydocstyle linter.

What it does

Checks for docstring first lines that are not in an imperative mood.

Why is this bad?

PEP 257 recommends that the first line of a docstring be written in the imperative mood, for consistency.

Hint: to rewrite the docstring in the imperative, phrase the first line as if it were a command.

This rule may not apply to all projects; its applicability is a matter of convention. By default, this rule is enabled when using the numpy and pep257 conventions, and disabled when using the google conventions.

Example

def average(values: list[float]) -> float:
    """Returns the mean of the given values."""

Use instead:

def average(values: list[float]) -> float:
    """Return the mean of the given values."""

Options

References