Those are the Sphinx style doc strings.

Python has some strong opinions about doc strings, see PEP257.

Here is a full description of all of the doc string types in Python: What is the standard Python docstring format?

I believe there should be an empty line before first :param to separate description. It fixed formatting for me.

Have you checked Settings... - Tools - Python integrated tools - Docstring format? You can choose the parsing style.

You can choose from:

• Plain
• Epytext
• reStructuredText
• Numpy
• Google

With PyCharm 5.0 we finally got to select Google and NumPy Style Python Docstrings templates.

It is also mentioned in the whatsnew section for PyCharm 5.0.

How to change the Docstring Format:

File --> Settings --> Tools --> Python Integrated Tools

There you can choose from the available Docstrings formats:

Plain, Epytext, reStructuredText, NumPy, Google

As pointed out by jstol: for Mac users, this is under

PyCharm -> Preferences -> Tools -> Python Integrated Tools.

You can select the docstring and format it using Edit -> Fill paragraph.

Alternatively the only automated tool I can think of (in Pycharm) is the option which automatically wraps the text after the line length reaches certain number of characters; It is available under Code Style settings (Hard wrap at & Wrap on typing). However, this setting is applied on everything (code included), not just docstring.

At the time of this writing, it is not possible. Several tickets have been submitted over the past several years requesting this feature, presumably it is being worked on.

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-33833

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-20243

In the short run, if you need to convert previous projects from the default, you can find the setting is stored in the ".idea/MYPROJECT.iml" file:

  <component name="PyDocumentationSettings">
    <option name="myDocStringFormat" value="Google" />
  </component>

By default, there is no PyDocumentationSettings component, so you'll need to add it. In Linux, you could run the following (very hackish) code in terminal to change all projects in any subdirectory:

new_docstring='  <component name="PyDocumentationSettings">\n    <option name="myDocStringFormat" value="Google" />\n  </component>\n</module>'
find . -type f -name '*.iml' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i "s|</module>|$new_docstring|g"

If you simply wanted to go from e.g. Numpy to Google, you might just use:

find . -type f -name '*.iml' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i "s|Numpy|Google|g"

We use it with sphinx-apidoc to generate our HTML and PDF documentation.

Here's an example how I use the docstrings:

def add_pdr(process, userid, log):
    """ Create and perform the target account operation PDR

    If the function/method is complex, I'd put a short one-line
    summary in the first line above, and a more detailed explanation
    here.

    :param dict process: dict of process details
    :param str userid: userid to perform actions on
    :param obj log: log object to perform logging to

    :raises KeyError: if the userid doesn't exist
    :raises APIError: if process dict is invalid

    :return: True on success, False upon failure

    """

The comments have answered the question. I'm just putting it here for completeness:

It's three fleshes (>>>).

It's used for doc test.

In PyCharm, when you rightclick it, it allows you to Run Doctest.

The syntax probably comes from the Python interactive shell.