Editing ReStructuredText (section)

{{short description|Lightweight markup language}}
{{distinguish|Representational state transfer}}
{{Infobox file format
| name                   = reStructuredText
| logo                   = 
| icon                   = [[File:ReStructuredText Logo.svg|frameless|reStructuredText logo]]
| iconcaption            = 
| screenshot             = 
| caption                = 
| extension              = .rst
| mime                   = {{plainlist|
* text/x-rst
* text/prs.fallenstein.rst}}
| type code              = 
| uniform type           = 
| conforms to            = 
| magic                  = 
| owner                  = David Goodger
| released               = {{Start date and age|2001|06|01}}<ref name="rst-first-release" />
| latest release version = Revision 8407
| latest release date    = {{Start date and age|2019|10|29}}
| genre                  = 
| container for          = 
| contained by           = 
| extended from          = 
| extended to            = 
| standard               = 
| open                   = [[Public domain]]
| url                    = {{URL|https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html}}
}}
'''reStructuredText''' ('''RST''', '''ReST''', or '''reST''') is a file format for textual data used primarily in the [[Python programming language]] community for [[technical documentation]].

It is part of the Docutils project of the Python Doc-SIG (Documentation Special Interest Group), aimed at creating a set of tools for Python similar to [[Javadoc]] for [[Java (programming language)|Java]] or [[Plain Old Documentation]] (POD) for [[Perl]]. Docutils can extract comments and information from Python programs, and format them into various forms of program documentation.<ref>{{cite web
  | last = Mertz
  | first = David
  | title = XML Matters: reStructuredText
  | publisher = IBM developerWorks
  | date = 2003-02-01
  | url = https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-matters24/
  | access-date = 2016-10-05 }}</ref>

In this sense, reStructuredText is a [[lightweight markup language]] designed to be both processable by documentation-processing software such as Docutils, and be easily readable by human programmers who are reading and writing Python [[source code]].