# Expanding \`@repl\` blocks in REPL and Jupyter
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** question, documentation, documenter, repl
**Created:** [October 22, 2023, 6:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288 "2023-10-22T18:24:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gdmsl](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdmsl)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2023, 6:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288/1 "2023-10-22T18:24:52Z")
While writing documentation, I am making large use of the `@repl` blocks with Documenter.jl. However, it seems that these blocks are not expanded automatically in the REPL or in Jupyter.
Is there a way to expand the `@repl` blocks in the REPL, when accessing the documentation with `?` ?
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### Author:  [@mortenpi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mortenpi)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2023, 3:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288/2 "2023-10-24T03:37:53Z")
Nope. The evaluation of at-repl blocks is provided by Documenter, so base Julia doesn’t know anything about them. Also, note that Documenter does not evaluate at-repl blocks that are in docstrings either (just the ones on Markdown pages).
_Theoretically_, one could implement some sort of [DocStringExtensions](https://github.com/JuliaDocs/DocStringExtensions.jl)-like approach for this. But this requires the code to actually be evaluated when you pull up docstrings, and that can be expensive, and I feel that this will likely be a footgun, often leading to bad UX.
Instead, you should use [doctests](https://documenter.juliadocs.org/stable/man/doctests/) for this. Documenter can help you keep them up to date.
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### Author:  [@gdmsl](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdmsl)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2023, 9:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288/3 "2023-10-24T09:00:17Z")
Thanks! Yeah, I feared so. Manually updating a bunch of `jldoctests` felt painful. I didn’t know that you could have Documenter to [fix them automatically](https://documenter.juliadocs.org/stable/man/doctests/#Fixing-Outdated-Doctests), thanks!
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### Author:  [@mortenpi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mortenpi)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2023, 9:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/expanding-repl-blocks-in-repl-and-jupyter/105288/4 "2023-10-24T09:26:48Z")
Yep. For new doctests, my strategy sometimes is to just write something like
````julia
```jldoctest
julia> foo()
julia> bar()
```
````
commit that (in case doctest fixing messes it up somehow), and then run the doctest fixing functionality on them, to populate the outputs.