[I would assign priority minor to this, but the tracker won't let me]

I really like the online documentation features of python. However, I wonder about the output of the following simple example:

class Descriptor(object):
    """Doc of a non-data descriptor."""
    def __get__(self, instance, owner):
        return 42 if instance else self

class GetSetDescriptor(Descriptor):
    """Doc of a data-descriptor."""
    def __set__(self, instance, value):
        pass

class Demo(object):
    non_data = Descriptor()
    data = GetSetDescriptor()

help(Demo)


This results in

Help on class Demo in module __main__:

class Demo(builtins.object)
 |  Methods defined here:
 |  
 |  non_data = <__main__.Descriptor object>
 |  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 |  Data descriptors defined here:
 |  
 |  __dict__
 |      dictionary for instance variables (if defined)
 |  
 |  __weakref__
 |      list of weak references to the object (if defined)
 |  
 |  data
 |      Doc of a data-descriptor.


I think the behaviour of pydoc wrt. the non_data descriptor is a bit out of line. I would have expected to find the docstring in the output here.

There is either an issue or a python-dev (or maybe even python-ideas) discussion about this subject somewhere.  It's a much deeper issue than it appears on the surface.

FYI, this still applies to r86094 of py3k.

pydoc should probably be adapted to look at a type for descrs.