Question

From the 2.7.2 docs, Section 6, Modules:

Passing two -O flags to the Python interpreter (-OO) will cause the bytecode compiler to perform optimizations that could in some rare cases result in malfunctioning programs. Currently only __doc__ strings are removed from the bytecode, resulting in more compact .pyo files.

This got my attention:

Since some programs may rely on having these available, you should only use this option if you know what you’re doing.

Are there any cases where removing a script’s docstrings might logically break some dependency or other aspect of a code’s functionality, disregarding any syntactic errors?

EDIT

Why would removing comments break a help statement? It doesnt seem to do so in the interpreter.

>>> help('import_pi')

Help on module import_pi:

NAME
    import_pi

FILE
    /home/droogans/py/import_pi.py

FUNCTIONS
    print_pi()

DATA
    pi = 3.1415926535897931


>>> import import_pi()
>>> import_pi.__doc__
>>>
>>> print import_pi.print_pi.__doc__
Convert a string or number to a floating point number, if possible.

Answer 1

For example ply is a module that does lexing and parsing which uses docstrings to describe the grammar. Stripping docstrings would break the code.