Just under http://docs.python.org/library/doctest.html#doctest.REPORTING_FLAGS documentation speaks about how Doctest directives maybe expressed as special Python comments.

There are some example along with the narrative story, however comments which here are the important part, are not displayed in code snippet.

Looking at the sphinx source for this page : http://docs.python.org/_sources/library/doctest.txt the comments are present. Eg.

   >>> print range(20) #doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
   [0,   1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,
   10,  11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]

However in the generated html, they are not:

  <span class="k">print</span> <span class="nb">range</span>
  <span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">20</span><span class="p">)</span> 
  <span class="go">[0,   1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,</span>


Note that this issue is not present in python 2.6.8 documentation http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.8/library/doctest.html#doctest.REPORTING_FLAGS and also 3.1.5 is ok.

It appears versions at 3.2.1 and 2.7.3