docformatter

Code

Docstrings

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PyPi

Formats docstrings to follow PEP 257.

Features

docformatter automatically formats docstrings to follow a subset of the PEP 257 conventions. Below are the relevant items quoted from PEP 257.

For consistency, always use triple double quotes around docstrings.
Triple quotes are used even though the string fits on one line.
Multi-line docstrings consist of a summary line just like a one-line docstring, followed by a blank line, followed by a more elaborate description.
Unless the entire docstring fits on a line, place the closing quotes on a line by themselves.

docformatter also handles some of the PEP 8 conventions.

Don’t write string literals that rely on significant trailing whitespace. Such trailing whitespace is visually indistinguishable and some editors (or more recently, reindent.py) will trim them.

docformatter formats docstrings compatible with black when passed the --black option.

docformatter formats field lists that use Epytext or Sphinx styles.

See the the full documentation at read-the-docs, especially the requirements section for a more detailed discussion of PEP 257 and other requirements.

Installation

From pip:

$ pip install --upgrade docformatter

Or, if you want to use pyproject.toml to configure docformatter and you’re using Python < 3.11:

$ pip install --upgrade docformatter[tomli]

With Python >=3.11, tomllib from the standard library is used.

Or, if you want to use a release candidate (or any other tag):

$ pip install git+https://github.com/PyCQA/docformatter.git@<RC_TAG>

Where <RC_TAG> is the release candidate tag you’d like to install. Release candidate tags will have the format v1.6.0-rc1 Release candidates will also be made available as a Github Release.

Example

After running:

$ docformatter --in-place example.py

this code

"""   Here are some examples.

    This module docstring should be dedented."""


def factorial(x):
    '''

    Return x factorial.

    This uses math.factorial.

    '''
    import math
    return math.factorial(x)


def print_factorial(x):
    """Print x factorial"""
    print(factorial(x))


def main():
    """Main
    function"""
    print_factorial(5)
    if factorial(10):
        print_factorial(22)

gets formatted into this

"""Here are some examples.

This module docstring should be dedented.
"""

def factorial(x):
    """Return x factorial.

    This uses math.factorial.
    """
    import math
    return math.factorial(x)


def print_factorial(x):
    """Print x factorial."""
    print(factorial(x))


def main():
    """Main function."""
    print_factorial(5)
    if factorial(10):
        print_factorial(22)

Marketing

Do you use docformatter? What style docstrings do you use? Add some badges to your project’s README and let everyone know.

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/%20formatter-docformatter-fedcba.svg
    :target: https://github.com/PyCQA/docformatter

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/%20style-sphinx-0a507a.svg
    :target: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/index.html

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/%20style-numpy-459db9.svg
    :target: https://numpydoc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/format.html

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/%20style-google-3666d6.svg
    :target: https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html#s3.8-comments-and-docstrings

Assistance

docformatter has an IRC channel on Libera.Chat in the #docformatter room.

There is no docformatter channel on the Python Code Quality Discord server, but you can ask for help in the # general channel.

Issues

Bugs and patches can be reported on the GitHub page.

Release files for docformatter 1.7.8

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for docformatter 1.7.8
File	Size	Uploaded
docformatter-1.7.8.tar.gz	37.8 kB	Apr 28, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for docformatter 1.7.8
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
docformatter-1.7.8-py3-none-any.whl 59.4 kB Apr 28, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 97.2 kB

Release files / docformatter-1.7.8.tar.gz

Download URL	docformatter-1.7.8.tar.gz
Size	37.8 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`6589b62a8f38c62c4c8c84cb1afa296af007c88c959e4c9d25c74c1f933c4dbf`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`6ae1f6fb315205e0a8f62ddbd52029b3d39cb5bada768af317193460f0454f6b`
Upload date	Apr 28, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`poetry/2.3.4 CPython/3.13.12 Linux/6.19.10-100.fc42.x86_64`

Release files / docformatter-1.7.8-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	docformatter-1.7.8-py3-none-any.whl
Size	59.4 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`8e518948bacb8d8df5d5f625060e214a200f0a908d8e6797c9ebbdd2cdd17467`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`099b9d2f60e967243aa0d1c6366f4f5feb0740393b5da7dbc66802034afc6331`
Upload date	Apr 28, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`poetry/2.3.4 CPython/3.13.12 Linux/6.19.10-100.fc42.x86_64`