Andre: I think you mean simply __builtins__, without the dir().

I was puzzled by this remark at first but now I’m seeing 

why.

When I boot into the Python shell directly from bash,

and ask for the type of __builtins__ i.e. type(__builtins__),

I get back that it’s a module. Then dir(__builtins__) lists

the contents, of the module, same as dir(math) would do.

However, if I’m in the Spyder IDE and ask for the type

of __builtins__, I’m told it’s a dict. If I ask for type(__builtins__)

I get a list of all the things dicts can do, not the contents of

the module.

Ah, but there’s more…in Spyder, I have not only __builtins__

but __builtin__ (singular), and the latter is a module that

behaves like __builtins__ (plural) in the primitive shell. At

the same time, the primitive shell doesn’t have a __builtin__,

only __builtins__. Spyder has added complexity.

I’m using the same version of Python (3.9) in both cases.

Kirby