Change the quotes in the repr of units from `"` to `'` by eerovaher · Pull Request #18509 · astropy/astropy

eerovaher · 2025-08-11T20:56:44Z

Description

The repr of Python strings uses ', not ", so to be consistent with that the repr of astropy units should also use '. The reason why " is currently used is a change in bd684a0. From what I can tell the change was arbitrary and I couldn't find any discussion about it.

There is no change in the repr of Quantity and in any case APE 2 allows changing the output of __repr__() even in bugfix releases.

By checking this box, the PR author has requested that maintainers do NOT use the "Squash and Merge" button. Maintainers should respect this when possible; however, the final decision is at the discretion of the maintainer that merges the PR.

github-actions · 2025-08-11T20:56:58Z

Thank you for your contribution to Astropy! 🌌 This checklist is meant to remind the package maintainers who will review this pull request of some common things to look for.

Do the proposed changes actually accomplish desired goals?
Do the proposed changes follow the Astropy coding guidelines?
Are tests added/updated as required? If so, do they follow the Astropy testing guidelines?
Are docs added/updated as required? If so, do they follow the Astropy documentation guidelines?
Is rebase and/or squash necessary? If so, please provide the author with appropriate instructions. Also see instructions for rebase and squash.
Did the CI pass? If no, are the failures related? If you need to run daily and weekly cron jobs as part of the PR, please apply the "Extra CI" label. Codestyle issues can be fixed by the bot.
Is a change log needed? If yes, did the change log check pass? If no, add the "no-changelog-entry-needed" label. If this is a manual backport, use the "skip-changelog-checks" label unless special changelog handling is necessary.
Is this a big PR that makes a "What's new?" entry worthwhile and if so, is (1) a "what's new" entry included in this PR and (2) the "whatsnew-needed" label applied?
At the time of adding the milestone, if the milestone set requires a backport to release branch(es), apply the appropriate "backport-X.Y.x" label(s) before merge.

eerovaher · 2025-08-11T20:57:30Z

        >>> su.field_names
        (['f0', ('f0', 'f1')], 'f1')
        >>> su['f1']
-        Unit("yr")
+        Unit('yr')


Notice that the quotes are now consistent with the quotes in field_names.

eerovaher · 2025-08-11T20:59:20Z

            "^Object with NFKC normalized name 'h' already exists in given namespace "
-            r'\(Unit\("h"\)\)\.$'
+            r"\(Unit\('h'\)\)\.$"


If this error message is ever shortened so that it would fit on one line then without this patch it would be necessary to explicitly escape the quotation marks within the string.

eerovaher · 2025-08-11T20:59:57Z


  >>> sc_gal.representation_component_units
-  {'l': Unit("deg"), 'b': Unit("deg")}
+  {'l': Unit('deg'), 'b': Unit('deg')}


No good reason for using both ' and " here.

The repr of Python strings uses `'`, not `"`, so for consistency the repr of `astropy` units should also use `'`. This change does not affect the representation of `Quantity` instances.

mhvk

Hmm, I think that original change is indeed a mistake, so from that perspective good to correct it. It is also is just that little bit cleaner repr, making it easier to parse (though inconsistent with ruff -- IMO, it would've been better if ruff preferred single quotes too).

It is more than a little churn, though, likely to break at least some doctests downstream as well, so I'd like agreement from the other reviewers that this is worth it.

Thankfully, in most cases (Quantity, Table, SkyCoord, etc.), the repr is not used; the corrections here are almost all just places where the docs explicitly look at a unit.

Overall, +0.5 myself.

eerovaher · 2025-08-25T14:38:33Z

Nobody has objected, so we can move forward with this.

It is also is just that little bit cleaner repr, making it easier to parse (though inconsistent with ruff -- IMO, it would've been better if ruff preferred single quotes too).

I don't understand what you mean by that.

mhvk · 2025-08-25T15:12:27Z

It is also is just that little bit cleaner repr, making it easier to parse (though inconsistent with ruff -- IMO, it would've been better if ruff preferred single quotes too).

I don't understand what you mean by that.

Just grumpy me that ruff chose to use the quote for strings that is not the default in python repr. Nothing one can do about it for this PR, though.

mhvk

OK, happy to sign off on this for the units part.

Would like sign off for the other packages, though, so ping again @modelling, @cosmology, @taldcroft, @mwcraig, @bmorris3.

taldcroft · 2025-08-25T15:19:40Z

I would suggest to bump this up to an email to astropy-dev for consideration. This is a pretty good example of a PR that makes no functional improvement to astropy but has the potential to cause non-productive work downstream.

taldcroft · 2025-08-25T15:19:53Z

So please DO NOT merge just yet.

taldcroft · 2025-08-25T15:23:15Z

And my feedback is that we've lived this for 11 years and given the ruff precedent and significant potential for needless docstring breakage downstream, I'm 👎 on this PR.

nstarman

Cosmology and units LGTM.
It is a move towards the PEP8 standards and general consistency with most other libraries.
While APE 2 does allow for __repr__ changes I do agree that Quantity and Unit are some of the most likely to show up in downstream doctests, so for that reason we should.

Do this for a Major.0 release.
Add to the what'snew a link to pytest-doctestplus's instructions on how to restrict doctests to specific versions of Astropy.

github-actions · 2026-01-09T05:51:48Z

Hi humans 👋 - this pull request hasn't had any new commits for approximately 4 months. I plan to close this in 30 days if the pull request doesn't have any new commits by then.

In lieu of a stalled pull request, please consider closing this and open an issue instead if a reminder is needed to revisit in the future. Maintainers may also choose to add keep-open label to keep this PR open but it is discouraged unless absolutely necessary.

If this PR still needs to be reviewed, as an author, you can rebase it to reset the clock.

If you believe I commented on this pull request incorrectly, please report this here.

github-actions · 2026-02-08T06:01:00Z

I'm going to close this pull request as per my previous message. If you think what is being added/fixed here is still important, please remember to open an issue to keep track of it. Thanks!

If this is the first time I am commenting on this issue, or if you believe I closed this issue incorrectly, please report this here.

github-actions · 2026-02-11T06:05:24Z

Hi humans 👋 - this pull request hasn't had any new commits for approximately 6 months. I plan to close this in 30 days if the pull request doesn't have any new commits by then.

In lieu of a stalled pull request, please consider closing this and open an issue instead if a reminder is needed to revisit in the future. Maintainers may also choose to add keep-open label to keep this PR open but it is discouraged unless absolutely necessary.

If this PR still needs to be reviewed, as an author, you can rebase it to reset the clock.

If you believe I commented on this pull request incorrectly, please report this here.

github-actions · 2026-10-16T05:45:47Z

Hi humans 👋 - this pull request hasn't had any new commits for approximately 1 year, 2 months. I plan to close this in a month if the pull request doesn't have any new commits by then.

In lieu of a stalled pull request, please consider closing this and open an issue instead if a reminder is needed to revisit in the future. Maintainers may also choose to add keep-open label to keep this PR open but it is discouraged unless absolutely necessary.

If this PR still needs to be reviewed, as an author, you can rebase it to reset the clock.

If you believe I commented on this pull request incorrectly, please report this here.

nstarman · 2026-11-08T23:02:09Z

This was deferred to v8. That milestone has passed. @mhvk should we merge this?

pllim · 2026-11-09T15:10:21Z

You cannot merge in this state. It has conflicts and failing CI. Someone has to take over if Eero is unresponsive.

mhvk · 2026-11-10T01:44:52Z

@nstarman - I'm still the same +0.5, and happy to get this in, but someone would need to clean it up and check against coordinated packages to have a sense of how much or little breakage this causes. Unfortunately, I don't see myself having time...

taldcroft · 2026-11-10T09:55:42Z

Making this change so close to the end of the release cycle seems like the worst time for any downstream impacts. Having waited this long, what about planning to get this in shape to merge into main right after the 8.1 release and get it released in 9.0?

taldcroft · 2026-11-10T10:01:04Z

If @eerovaher or someone else gets this rebased and passing CI again, then I expect it would be easy enough for me or @nstarman to use Claude to check all the coordinated packages with this branch.

mhvk · 2026-11-10T14:29:25Z

Agreed that we might as well wait for 9.0 now (above, we had said we'd do it in a major release).

pllim · 2026-11-10T17:53:30Z

OK updated the milestone. Should still clean up the conflicts, which would also reset the stale timer and give you 5 more months.

github-actions · 2026-11-12T05:39:55Z

Hi humans 👋 - this pull request hasn't had any new commits for approximately 1 year, 3 months. I plan to close this in a month if the pull request doesn't have any new commits by then.

In lieu of a stalled pull request, please consider closing this and open an issue instead if a reminder is needed to revisit in the future.

If this PR still needs to be reviewed, as an author, you can rebase it to reset the clock.

If you believe I commented on this pull request incorrectly, please report this here.

eerovaher added this to the v7.2.0 milestone Aug 11, 2025

eerovaher requested a review from mhvk August 11, 2025 20:56

eerovaher added the units label Aug 11, 2025

eerovaher requested review from a team and taldcroft as code owners August 11, 2025 20:56

eerovaher added the no-changelog-entry-needed label Aug 11, 2025

eerovaher requested a review from a team as a code owner August 11, 2025 20:56

github-actions Bot added table Docs nddata coordinates modeling cosmology uncertainty timeseries labels Aug 11, 2025

github-project-automation Bot added this to Cosmology, the Expansion Aug 11, 2025

github-project-automation Bot moved this to Triage in Cosmology, the Expansion Aug 11, 2025

eerovaher commented Aug 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

Change the quotes in the repr of units from " to '

4485236

The repr of Python strings uses `'`, not `"`, so for consistency the repr of `astropy` units should also use `'`. This change does not affect the representation of `Quantity` instances.

eerovaher force-pushed the unit-repr-quotes branch from 9a13d57 to 4485236 Compare August 11, 2025 21:13

mhvk reviewed Aug 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

mhvk approved these changes Aug 25, 2025

View reviewed changes

github-project-automation Bot moved this from Triage to Reviewer approved in Cosmology, the Expansion Aug 25, 2025

nstarman approved these changes Aug 25, 2025

View reviewed changes

github-actions Bot added the closed-by-bot Closed by stale bot label Feb 8, 2026

github-actions Bot closed this Feb 8, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this from Reviewer approved to Done in Cosmology, the Expansion Feb 8, 2026

nstarman reopened this Feb 9, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this from Done to In Progress in Cosmology, the Expansion Feb 9, 2026

nstarman removed Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale closed-by-bot Closed by stale bot labels Feb 9, 2026

github-actions Bot added the Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale label Feb 10, 2026

nstarman added keep-open and removed Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale labels Feb 11, 2026

astrofrog modified the milestones: v8.0.0, v8.1.0 May 5, 2026

pllim removed the keep-open label Oct 14, 2026

github-actions Bot added the Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale label Oct 15, 2026

pllim modified the milestones: v8.1.0, v9.0.0 Nov 10, 2026

pllim removed the Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale label Nov 10, 2026

github-actions Bot added the Close? Tell stale bot that this issue/PR is stale label Nov 11, 2026

Conversation

eerovaher commented Aug 11, 2025

Description

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Aug 11, 2025

Uh oh!

eerovaher Aug 11, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

eerovaher Aug 11, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

eerovaher Aug 11, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

mhvk left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

eerovaher commented Aug 25, 2025

Uh oh!

mhvk commented Aug 25, 2025

Uh oh!

mhvk left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

taldcroft commented Aug 25, 2025

Uh oh!

taldcroft commented Aug 25, 2025

Uh oh!

taldcroft commented Aug 25, 2025

Uh oh!

nstarman left a comment • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Jan 9, 2026

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Feb 8, 2026

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Feb 11, 2026

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Oct 16, 2026

Uh oh!

nstarman commented Nov 8, 2026

Uh oh!

pllim commented Nov 9, 2026

Uh oh!

mhvk commented Nov 10, 2026

Uh oh!

taldcroft commented Nov 10, 2026

Uh oh!

taldcroft commented Nov 10, 2026

Uh oh!

mhvk commented Nov 10, 2026

Uh oh!

pllim commented Nov 10, 2026

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Nov 12, 2026

Uh oh!

This branch has not been deployed

Reviewers

Uh oh!

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

6 participants

nstarman left a comment •

edited

Loading