Issue #24079: Improve description of the text and tail attributes for
ElementTree Element objects. Initial patch by Martin Panter.
diff --git a/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst b/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
index 46396dd..4f9b2a3 100644
--- a/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
@@ -600,21 +600,29 @@
.. attribute:: text
+ tail
- The *text* attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with
- the element. As the name implies this attribute is usually a string but
- may be any application-specific object. If the element is created from
- an XML file the attribute will contain any text found between the element
- tags.
+ These attributes can be used to hold additional data associated with
+ the element. Their values are usually strings but may be any
+ application-specific object. If the element is created from
+ an XML file, the *text* attribute holds either the text between
+ the element's start tag and its first child or end tag, or ``None``, and
+ the *tail* attribute holds either the text between the element's
+ end tag and the next tag, or ``None``. For the XML data
+ .. code-block:: xml
- .. attribute:: tail
+ <a><b>1<c>2<d/>3</c></b>4</a>
- The *tail* attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with
- the element. This attribute is usually a string but may be any
- application-specific object. If the element is created from an XML file
- the attribute will contain any text found after the element's end tag and
- before the next tag.
+ the *a* element has ``None`` for both *text* and *tail* attributes,
+ the *b* element has *text* ``"1"`` and *tail* ``"4"``,
+ the *c* element has *text* ``"2"`` and *tail* ``None``,
+ and the *d* element has *text* ``None`` and *tail* ``"3"``.
+
+ To collect the inner text of an element, see :meth:`itertext`, for
+ example ``"".join(element.itertext())``.
+
+ Applications may store arbitrary objects in these attributes.
.. attribute:: attrib