pbdoc needed?

[MatthijsBurgh]

Is it really needed to add the pbdoc prefix and suffix to the docstrings?

[bethebunny]

No, it's not needed, you can supply the docstring via any code mechanism you want that has type string.

The syntax R"pbdoc(...)pbdoc" is a raw string literal. This allows things like double quotes to appear in the string literal. The pbdoc isn't special, it's just trying to create a sequence of characters that are very unlikely to appear in the wild to end the string literal. This feature is especially useful when trying to generate PyBind definitions - you'd have to have a generated string that includes somethirg like )pbdoc"

I don't know for sure, but I suspect "pbdoc" is a compromise being short for "pybind-docstring" but also short to type and wouldn't otherwise commonly exist in code or documentation.