Python Help Built in Function

Python "help" function

Python has many built-in functions globally available. I'm sure most are familiar with dict, int, str, or even zip.

Today I came across the help function:

help([object])

Invoke the built-in help system. (This function is intended for interactive use.) If no argument is given, the interactive help system starts on the interpreter console. If the argument is a string, then the string is looked up as the name of a module, function, class, method, keyword, or documentation topic, and a help page is printed on the console. If the argument is any other kind of object, a help page on the object is generated.

This function is added to the built-in namespace by the site module.

If you call it inside a script, the output will be redirected to std.out.

Let's say you have the following dict:

user = {'name':'goliat'}
help(user)

The help output would look like this:

Help on dict object:

class dict(object)
 |  dict() -> new empty dictionary
 |  dict(mapping) -> new dictionary initialized from a mapping object's
 |      (key, value) pairs
 |  dict(iterable) -> new dictionary initialized as if via:
 |      d = {}
 |      for k, v in iterable:
 |          d[k] = v
 |  dict(**kwargs) -> new dictionary initialized with the name=value pairs
 |      in the keyword argument list.  For example:  dict(one=1, two=2)
 |  
 |  Methods defined here:
 |  
 |  __cmp__(...)
 |      x.__cmp__(y) <==> cmp(x,y)
 |  
 |  __contains__(...)
 |      D.__contains__(k) -> True if D has a key k, else False
 |  
 |  __delitem__(...)
 |      x.__delitem__(y) <==> del x[y]
 |  
 |  __eq__(...)
 |      x.__eq__(y) <==> x==y
 |  
 |  __ge__(...)
 |      x.__ge__(y) <==> x>=y
 |  
 |  __getattribute__(...)
 |      x.__getattribute__('name') <==> x.name
 |  
 |  __getitem__(...)
 |      x.__getitem__(y) <==> x[y]
 |  
 |  __gt__(...)
 |      x.__gt__(y) <==> x>y
 |  
 |  __init__(...)
 |      x.__init__(...) initializes x; see help(type(x)) for signature
 |  
 |  __iter__(...)
 |      x.__iter__() <==> iter(x)
 |  
 |  __le__(...)
 |      x.__le__(y) <==> x<=y
 |  __len__(...)
 |      x.__len__() <==> len(x)
 |  
 |  __lt__(...)
 |      x.__lt__(y) <==> x<y
 |  
 |  __ne__(...)
 |      x.__ne__(y) <==> x!=y
 |  
 |  __repr__(...)
 |      x.__repr__() <==> repr(x)
 |  
 |  __setitem__(...)
 |      x.__setitem__(i, y) <==> x[i]=y
 |  
 |  __sizeof__(...)
 |      D.__sizeof__() -> size of D in memory, in bytes
 |  
 |  clear(...)
 |      D.clear() -> None.  Remove all items from D.
 |  
 |  copy(...)
 |      D.copy() -> a shallow copy of D
 |  
 |  fromkeys(...)
 |      dict.fromkeys(S[,v]) -> New dict with keys from S and values equal to v.
 |      v defaults to None.
 |  
 |  get(...)
 |      D.get(k[,d]) -> D[k] if k in D, else d.  d defaults to None.
 |  
 |  has_key(...)
 |      D.has_key(k) -> True if D has a key k, else False
 |  
 |  items(...)
 |      D.items() -> list of D's (key, value) pairs, as 2-tuples
 |  
 |  iteritems(...)
 |      D.iteritems() -> an iterator over the (key, value) items of D
 |  
 |  iterkeys(...)
 |      D.iterkeys() -> an iterator over the keys of D
 |  
 |  itervalues(...)
 |      D.itervalues() -> an iterator over the values of D
 |  
 |  keys(...)
 |      D.keys() -> list of D's keys
 |  
 |  pop(...)
 |      D.pop(k[,d]) -> v, remove specified key and return the corresponding value.
 |      If key is not found, d is returned if given, otherwise KeyError is raised
 |  
 |  popitem(...)
 |      D.popitem() -> (k, v), remove and return some (key, value) pair as a
 |      2-tuple; but raise KeyError if D is empty.
 |  
 |  setdefault(...)
 |      D.setdefault(k[,d]) -> D.get(k,d), also set D[k]=d if k not in D
 |  
 |  update(...)
 |      D.update([E, ]**F) -> None.  Update D from dict/iterable E and F.
 |      If E present and has a .keys() method, does:     for k in E: D[k] = E[k]
 |      If E present and lacks .keys() method, does:     for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v
 |      In either case, this is followed by: for k in F: D[k] = F[k]
 |  
 |  values(...)
 |      D.values() -> list of D's values
 |  
 |  viewitems(...)
 |      D.viewitems() -> a set-like object providing a view on D's items
 |  
 |  viewkeys(...)
 |      D.viewkeys() -> a set-like object providing a view on D's keys
 |  
 |  viewvalues(...)
 |      D.viewvalues() -> an object providing a view on D's values
 |  
 |  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 |  Data and other attributes defined here:
 |  
 |  __hash__ = None
 |  
 |  __new__ = <built-in method __new__ of type object>
 |      T.__new__(S, ...) -> a new object with type S, a subtype of T