A Pylint plugin for checking the consistency of string quotes.

Below is an example python file that uses inconsistent string quotes.

example.py

"""Example python file.
"""


def main(output="default"):
    '''Entrypoint to the example script which prints out the
    value in the 'output' variable.
    '''
    print output


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main('testing')

which would yield

No config file found, using default configuration
************* Module example
C:  5, 0: Invalid string quote ", should be ' (invalid-string-quote)
C: 12, 0: Invalid string quote ", should be ' (invalid-string-quote)
C:  6, 0: Invalid docstring quote ''', should be """ (invalid-docstring-quote)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Your code has been rated at 2.50/10 (previous run: 2.50/10, +0.00)

Fixing up the example above based on linting recommendations,

example.py

"""Example python file.
"""


def main(output='default'):
    """Entrypoint to the example script which prints out the
    value in the 'output' variable.
    """
    print output


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main('testing')

which yields

No config file found, using default configuration

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Your code has been rated at 10.00/10 (previous run: 2.50/10, +7.50)

pip install pylint-quotes

To use pylint-quotes, it must loaded in as a plugin when running pylint

pylint --load-plugins pylint_quotes <module-or-package>

pylint-quotes provides a single StringQuoteChecker that checks for consistency between

• single quote string literals

  x = 'example'
  y = "example"

• triple quote strings

  """ single line block comments """
  '''
     multi-line block comments too
  '''
  
  x = '''example'''
  y = """
  example
  """

• docstrings (module, class, function)

  def x():
      '''Example'''
      pass
      
  def y():
      """
          Multi-line example.
      """
      pass

The string quote type can be configured as either 'single' or 'double' in the configuration file. For example, to check for single quote string literals, double quote triple quoted string, and double quoted docstrings,

string-quote=single
triple-quote=double
docstring-quote=double

the default configuration is

string-quote=single
triple-quote=single
docstring-quote=double

Additionally the string-quote can be configured to avoid escaping: by default it enforces one type but if using the other type would avoid some escaping then it enforces the other one. To use those smart types the config is 'single-avoid-escape', and 'double-avoid-escape'.