It's hard to find documentation

Brad Bollenbach bbollenbach at home.com
Sun Dec 9 11:35:27 EST 2001


In article <9uuith$qb8$1 at peabody.colorado.edu>, Fernando Pérez wrote:
> As already discussed, the website is absolutely useless.
> 
> But at the python command prompt, just type 'from pydoc import help'. 
> 
> Then type one of:
> help function_name
> help 'keywords'
> help 'modules'
> help 'topics'
> 
> or just plain help. The system is quite impressive. Also, don't 
> forget the fabulous pydoc -g which runs the module doc system as a 
> webserver on port 7464.

I'm well aware of pydoc. Using your instructions on how to use it, we
/still/ aren't able to locate the top-level document Bruce was
interested in:

mothra at mothra:~$ python2.1
Python 2.1.1 (#1, Nov 11 2001, 18:19:24) 
[GCC 2.95.4 20011006 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from pydoc import help
>>> help("Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter")
no Python documentation found for 'Extending and Embedding the Python
Interpreter'

>> If I wanted it badly enough, I would have done so already. :)
> 
> Ka-Ping Yee already did.

Kudos to Ka-Ping Yee. He obviously wanted it more than I did, but it
still doesn't provide the extreme ease of use (particularly for
accessing top-level documents with minimal effort) that, for example,
perldoc does. (That isn't a Perl plug, but the name "pydoc" implies that
it wanted to be Python's equivalent of perldoc.)

</two_cents>

Brad



More information about the Python-list mailing list