Windows, IDLE, __doc_, other

[Lie Ryan]

On 12/21/2009 1:19 PM, W. eWatson wrote:

> When I use numpy.__doc__ in IDLE under Win XP, I get a heap of words without reasonable line breaks.
>
> "\nNumPy\n=====\n\nProvides\n  1. An array object of arbitrary homogeneous items\n  2. Fast mathematical operations over arrays\n  3. Linear Algebra, Fourier Transforms, Random Number
> ....
>
> Is there a way to get this formated properly.

help(object)


> If I use dir(numpy), I get yet a very long list that starts as:
> ['ALLOW_THREADS', 'BUFSIZE', 'CLIP', 'DataSource', 'ERR_CALL', 'ERR_DEFAULT', 'ERR_DEFAULT2', 'ERR_IGNORE', 'ERR_LOG', 'ERR_PRINT', 'ERR_RAISE', 'ERR_WARN', 'FLOATING_POINT_SUPPORT', 'FPE_DIVIDEBYZERO', 'FPE_INVALID', 'FPE_OVERFLOW', 'FPE_UNDERFLOW', 'False_', 'Inf', 'Infinity', 'MAXDIMS', 'MachAr', 'NAN', 'NINF', 'NZERO', 'NaN', 'PINF', 'PZERO', 'PackageLoader', 'RAISE', 'RankWarning', 'SHIFT_DIVIDEBYZERO', 'SHIFT_INVALID', 'SHIFT_OVERFLOW', 'SHIFT_UNDERFLOW', 'ScalarType', 'Tester', 'True_', 'UFUNC_BUFSIZE_DEFAULT'
> ....
> I see this might be a dictionary. What can I do to make it more readable or useful, or is that it? Is there a more abc as in Linux?

You can use pprint module:

import pprint
pprint.pprint(dir(object))

though help() is usually better

> It the IDLE shell, it's not possible to retrieve lines entered earlier without copying them. Is there an edit facility?

Press Alt+P (Previous) and Alt+N (Next). Or you can click/select on the 
line you want to copy and press Enter.

>> Add to this. Isn't there a way to see the arguments and descriptions of
>> functions?

Use help(). Or if you're doing this without human intervention, use 
`inspect` module.