# doc (3-doc.us)

People say "doc" to mean a doctor, a person who treats illness. They also say it to mean a document, any piece of writing like a letter or report.

## What a model may hear
- documentation file (software projects): retrieve or generate READMEs, API docs, or help pages
- docstring (Python and other code): read inline documentation from code comments as structured metadata
- DOM Document object (web programming): treat the word as a browser's parsed HTML tree and run queries on it
- Docker container (DevOps slang): assume a container or image reference, sometimes spelled 'doc' informally

## Where people and models part ways
- Says: "show me the doc"
  Means: show me the document I wrote
  May be taken as: returns a software project's documentation or a code docstring
  Say instead: "show me the document file I uploaded"
- Says: "ask the doc"
  Means: ask the doctor for advice
  May be taken as: triggers a documentation lookup or medical knowledge base query
  Say instead: "what would a doctor say about this symptom"
- Says: "save the doc"
  Means: save my Word file
  May be taken as: writes to a documentation repository or generates a docstring
  Say instead: "save the document file to my downloads folder"

## Tips
- Say 'document' not 'doc' when you mean a file you wrote.
- Say 'doctor' or 'physician' when you mean a medical person.
- Say 'documentation' when you want help files or manuals.
- In code contexts, 'docstring' is clearer than 'doc' for inline comments.
- If you mean a specific file, name it: 'the doc I uploaded yesterday'.

## Often confused with
- dock: a platform for ships or a macOS launcher
- docs: plural documents, or Google Docs specifically
- docx: a Microsoft Word file format
- dot: a small mark, or a graph node
- docket: a court schedule or list of cases