Question

I’ve noticed that, when my Python unit tests contain documentation at the top of the function, sometimes the framework prints them in the test output. Normally, the test output contains one test per line:

<test name> ... ok 

If the test has a docstring of the form

"""
test that so and so happens
"""

than all is well. But if the test has a docstring all on one line:

"""test that so and so happens"""

then the test output takes more than one line and includes the doc like this:

<test name>
test that so and so happens ... ok

I can’t find where this is documented behavior. Is there a way to turn this off?

Answer 1

The first line of the docstring is used; the responsible method is TestCase.shortDescription(), which you can override in your testcases:

class MyTests(unittest.TestCase):
    #  ....
    def shortDescription(self):
        return None

By always returning None you turn the feature off entirely. If you want to format the docstring differently, it’s available as self._testMethodDoc.