DOCFORMATTER(1)

✨ NAME ✨

docformatter — okay bestie, it Formats docstrings to follow Python PEP 257 (Documentation) 💖 that's literally the whole job and she does it flawlessly.

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So you run it like this:

usage: docformatter [-h] [-i | -c] [-d] [-r] [-e [EXCLUDE ...]]
       [-n [NON-CAP ...]] [-s [style]] [--rest-section-adorns REGEX]
              [--black] [--wrap-summaries length] [--wrap-descriptions length]
              [--force-wrap] [--tab-width width] [--blank]
              [--pre-summary-newline] [--pre-summary-space]
              [--make-summary-multi-line] [--close-quotes-on-newline] [--range
              line line] [--docstring-length length length] [--non-strict]
              [--config CONFIG] [--version] files [files ...]

Periodt. Now let's get into it 👑

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🌸 positional arguments: 🌸

• files — the files you wanna format, or '-' if you're feeding it from standard in 🫶

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💅 options: 💅

• -h, --help — shows this help message and dips (exit) ✨
• -i, --in-place — actually edits your files instead of just printing diffs. main character move, no cap 🔥
• -c, --check — only checks and reports back which files are formatted wrong. snitch mode but make it helpful 💀
• -d, --diff — when you use it together with --check or --in-place, it also says what changes would be made 👀
• -r, --recursive — drills down directories recursively, she goes deep 🦋
• -e [EXCLUDE ...], --exclude [EXCLUDE ...] — in recursive mode, exclude directories and files by names 🙈
• -n [NON-CAP ...], --non-cap [NON-CAP ...] — gives her a list of words NOT to capitalize when they show up as the first word in the summary 💜
• -s style, --style style — the docstring style to use when formatting parameter lists. One of epytext, sphinx. (default: sphinx) 🎀
• --rest-section-adorns REGEX — regular expression for identifying reST section adornments (default: [!"#$%&'()*+,-./\:;<=>?@[]^_{|}~]{4,}`) ⭐
• --black — makes formatting compatible with standard black options (default: False) 🖤
• --wrap-summaries length — wrap those long summary lines at this length; set it to 0 to disable wrapping entirely (default: 79, 88 with the --black option) ✨
• --wrap-descriptions length — wraps descriptions at this length; set to 0 to disable wrapping (default: 72, 88 with the --black option) 🎀
• --force-wrap — forces descriptions to be wrapped even if it may result in a mess. brutal honesty from her (default: False) 💀
• --tab-width width — tabs in indentation count as this many characters when wrapping lines (default: 1) 🌈
• --blank — adds a blank line after the description (default: False) 💖
• --pre-summary-newline — adds a newline before the summary of a multi-line docstring (default: False) 🦋
• --pre-summary-space — adds a space after the opening triple quotes (default: False) 🌸
• --make-summary-multi-line — adds a newline before AND after the summary of a one-line docstring (default: False) 😭
• --close-quotes-on-newline — places the closing triple quotes on a new line when a one-line docstring wraps to two or more lines (default: False) ✨
• --range line line — applies docformatter to docstrings between these lines; line numbers are indexed at 1 (default: None) 👑
• --docstring-length length length — applies docformatter to docstrings within the given length range (default: None) 💜
• --non-strict — don't strictly follow reST syntax to identify lists (see issue #67) (default: False) 🙈
• --config CONFIG — path to the file containing docformatter options 🎀
• --version — show the program's version number and exit 💅

okay quick vibe check fr fr: --force-wrap literally warns you it "may result in a mess" so don't come for her if it's messy 😭

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That's the whole page bestie, slay 💖✨

This was docformatter 1.7.8, from April 2026, and yeah she's an icon in the DOCFORMATTER(1) manual, iykyk 🫶🌸