warnings.warn(...) arguments include '\*', which is wrong - 3.12

[scotscotmcc]

Documentation

Looking at the online python docs at https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/warnings.html#warnings.warn. The function call is listed on the site like this:

warnings.warn(message, category=None, stacklevel=1, source=None, \*, skip_file_prefixes=None)

As far as I know (my apologies if I am very wrong), \* isn't a valid argument, and it should just be *.

Best guess is that since the actual code (here) has a linebreak in the arguments, that linebreak got formatted for the docs as a \*.

I saw this all come up in this stackoverflow question where other people thought it all through, i'm just posting the issue.

This seems to be new in 3.12

Linked PRs

• gh-114811: Update warnings.rst, changed '\*' to '*' #114819
• [3.12] gh-114811: Change '\*' to '*' in warnings.rst (GH-114819) #114837

[hugovk]

Thank you for the report!

Yep, this shows up at https://docs.python.org/3/library/warnings.html#warnings.warn but not https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/warnings.html#warnings.warn

Looking at the code:

cpython/Lib/warnings.py

Lines 297 to 298 in 3e06cce

	def warn(message, category=None, stacklevel=1, source=None,
	*, skip_file_prefixes=()):

You're right, this should just be *.

This means the arguments to the right of the asterisk are keyword-only.

I guess the original author added the slash in an attempt to escape it, but it's actually not needed here.

Would you like to make a PR to fix it?

The file to fix is https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Doc/library/warnings.rst

[terryjreedy]

Thanks for catching and patching the error.