<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Hello everyone,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I’m a Python beginner and just getting familiar with it. (I need it for my EE B.Sc. project) <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>For the learning purposes I use IDLE and (Learning Python by written by Mark Lutz).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Let’s say that I have some earlier experience with C language, but still Python is a different one )))<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Anyway, the question I would like to ask is about understanding “help” contents.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It may look to obvious and even a dumb question, but still I need your help.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Here is a brief background with example in order to introduce my problem in more clear way:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Suppose I get some list created: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>>>L=[i for i in range(1,15,2)]<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>As it can be seen, this is the odd numbers list: [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13]<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Supppose I need to check the occurrence of number 7, in this case I’ll just write:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>>>L.index(7)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The result is :3<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>So here is the question itself:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If I use the help command to check the “range” command I get this info: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>range(stop) -> range object<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>range(start, stop[, step]) -> range object<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>As you’ve seen in my example I used range(1,15,2). But this knowledge I got from googling a couple of sites.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I still can’t understand the “help” command description. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>For instance, how do I need to understand that (start,stop[,step]) it’s just a three numbers? <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>What do those brackets--> [,] mean?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The same about “str.replace” command, where I get this:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>S.replace(old, new[, count]) – using this description I can’t really understand how to write the “replace” function parameters…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>So I googled it up and found this example in order to get more clear understanding of command use.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>str = "this is string example....wow!!! this is really string"<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>print str.replace("is", "was")<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>print str.replace("is", "was", 3)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The result: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>thwas was string example....wow!!! thwas was really string<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>thwas was string example....wow!!! thwas is really string<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But still how do I know that those “old, new” are the strings and [,count] just a number? <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> I mean, it was more naturally(as a baginner) to me to write str.replace(is,was[,3]) and that’s all… <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Finally, as for my opinion, this is a lame way to learn “what a command do” by constantly googling it for examples… <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I need to get more familiar with “help”, but the main problem, is that I couldn’t find any suitable explanations/tutorials about “help” syntax and etc. (maybe didn’t search well).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Any explanations/links will be greatly appreciated. I need some help for “help” ^_^<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thanks in advance,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Ivan. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>