As pointed out in https://github.com/Wilfred/helpful/issues/197#issuecomment-1030905340, when a docstring contains a quoted string, the contents of that string should already be double-escaped such that its printed representation is correctly escaped (and can be copy-pasted etc.).
This is the case for all built-in Emacs docs, I was especially tripped up by this section in the documentation of font-lock-keywords, rendered in helpful as:
For example, an element of the form highlights (if not already
highlighted):
"\\\\\\=<foo\\\\\\=>"
Discrete occurrences of "foo" in the value of the variable
font-lock-keyword-face.
("fu\\\\(bar\\\\)" . 1)
Substring "bar" within all occurrences of "fubar" in the
value of font-lock-keyword-face.
and in its intended presentation by describe-variable as:
For example, an element of the form highlights (if not already
highlighted):
"\\<foo\\>"
Discrete occurrences of "foo" in the value of the variable
‘font-lock-keyword-face’.
("fu\\(bar\\)" . 1)
Substring "bar" within all occurrences of "fubar" in the
value of ‘font-lock-keyword-face’.
As pointed out in https://github.com/Wilfred/helpful/issues/197#issuecomment-1030905340, when a docstring contains a quoted string, the contents of that string should already be double-escaped such that its printed representation is correctly escaped (and can be copy-pasted etc.). This is the case for all built-in Emacs docs, I was especially tripped up by this section in the documentation of
font-lock-keywords, rendered in helpful as:and in its intended presentation by
describe-variableas:The motivating example for the change was in fact an inaccuracy in one of Counsel's docstrings, and has since been fixed:https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper/commit/11609248ef7730d76820fbf85b59bf4cb5f0c280