bpo-42958: Improve description of shallow= in filecmp.cmp docs (GH-27166)
Co-authored-by: Łukasz Langa <lukasz@langa.pl>
Co-authored-by: Alexander Vandenbulcke <alexander.vandenbulcke95@gmail.com>
(cherry picked from commit a8dc4893d2b28827e82447326ea47759c161a722)
Co-authored-by: andrei kulakov <andrei.avk@gmail.com>
diff --git a/Doc/library/filecmp.rst b/Doc/library/filecmp.rst
index c60603b..83e9e14 100644
--- a/Doc/library/filecmp.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/filecmp.rst
@@ -22,8 +22,11 @@
Compare the files named *f1* and *f2*, returning ``True`` if they seem equal,
``False`` otherwise.
- If *shallow* is true, files with identical :func:`os.stat` signatures are
- taken to be equal. Otherwise, the contents of the files are compared.
+ If *shallow* is true and the :func:`os.stat` signatures (file type, size, and
+ modification time) of both files are identical, the files are taken to be
+ equal.
+
+ Otherwise, the files are treated as different if their sizes or contents differ.
Note that no external programs are called from this function, giving it
portability and efficiency.
diff --git a/Lib/filecmp.py b/Lib/filecmp.py
index 7c47eb0..70a4b23 100644
--- a/Lib/filecmp.py
+++ b/Lib/filecmp.py
@@ -36,8 +36,9 @@ def cmp(f1, f2, shallow=True):
f2 -- Second file name
- shallow -- Just check stat signature (do not read the files).
- defaults to True.
+ shallow -- treat files as identical if their stat signatures (type, size,
+ mtime) are identical. Otherwise, files are considered different
+ if their sizes or contents differ. [default: True]
Return value:
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-07-15-11-19-03.bpo-42958.gC5IHM.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-07-15-11-19-03.bpo-42958.gC5IHM.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c93b84d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-07-15-11-19-03.bpo-42958.gC5IHM.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Updated the docstring and docs of :func:`filecmp.cmp` to be more accurate
+and less confusing especially in respect to *shallow* arg.