On Oct 10, 2011 7:48 PM, "Stayvoid" wrote:

Hi there!

I want to make an improvement connected with the interactive help mode.

Example: You want to check some keys in the dictionary, but you can't remember the syntax of the command.

If you type something like this: help(key), the interpreter will output an error. Because help(key) is just a plain expression, and it tries to evaluate key first before even calling help(). Maybe help(*key*) could make it work?

In my opinion it will be very helpful for newcomers if the interpreter could search for similar commands and output them all.

Code listing: help(*key*) - [1] D.has_key() [2] D.keys() …

To learn more you should type the number.

I think the game is worth the candle if the suggested feature could work as fast as the current helper.

Kind regards. _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas

I think a lot of things can be improved in help() but I wouldn't change the python language for that. Once in help(), that kind of builtin/types/modules/methods/docs searching should be more easily accessible. Right now you have to specifically know what you're looking for to find most things. --Yuval

On Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:39:31 +1100 Steven D'Aprano wrote:

Stayvoid wrote:

...

Hi there!

I want to make an improvement connected with the interactive help mode.

Example: You want to check some keys in the dictionary, but you can't remember the syntax of the command.

If you type something like this: help(key), the interpreter will output an error. Because help(key) is just a plain expression, and it tries to evaluate key first before even calling help(). Maybe help(*key*) could make it work?

...

...

help('key') no Python documentation found for 'key'

...

...

...

Perhaps help should be more aggressive at trying to find something useful before giving up.

Having help do a search if passed a string would qualify as "more aggressive", would be useful, and wouldn't break existing usage. It should be easy to tweak the help function so that if it's passed an instance of a basic_string, it compiles that into a regular expression and uses that to try and find things. The question is - what should it be searching? top-level names in sys.modules? Docstrings in sys.modules? Something else entirely? Is there anything that can be searched here that would both be more useful than the existing interactive facility and not take an inordinate amount of time to search? http://www.mired.org/ Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information. O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org

Steven D'Aprano schrieb am Di, 11. Okt 2011, um 12:39:31 +1100:

A keyword search facility, familiar to Linux users as `man -k key` or `apropos key`, might be useful.

There already is "pydoc -k", also known as pydoc.help.listmodules(key="whatever") And there are some special topics like help("DICTIONARIES") for an introduction to dictionaries. I wonder if anybody *ever* found that documentation from the interactive prompt. There would certainly be a point in advertising this documentation somehow when entering the interactive help prompt. Cheers, Sven

On Tue, 2011-10-11 at 13:23 +0100, Sven Marnach wrote:

Sven Marnach schrieb am Di, 11. Okt 2011, um 12:34:27 +0100:

...

And there are some special topics like

help("DICTIONARIES")

for an introduction to dictionaries. I wonder if anybody *ever* found that documentation from the interactive prompt. There would certainly be a point in advertising this documentation somehow when entering the interactive help prompt.

I just noticed that these topics *are* advertised in the interactive help prompt, and can be listed by entering "topics". Apparently I never read the introduction text carefully enough.

There is also keyword-based module searching by entering

modules [keyword]

The help function lives in the pydoc module. Try this if you are using python 3.1 or later. It's a very nice way to look through pythons library.

...

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import pydoc pydoc.browse()

Cheers, Ron

at the help prompt.

Sorry for the noise, Sven _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas