why does "help(import)" not work?

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Robert P. J. Day schrieb:
>   i'm sure there's a painfully obvious answer to this, but is there a
> reason i can't do:
> 
>>>> help(import)
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     help(import)
>               ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> 
>   on the other hand, i can certainly go into "help()" and type
> "import" to get that help.  it seems counter-intuitive to have the
> first variation fail but the second succeed.
> 
>   what is the rule for this in python3?

import is a keyword, so the parser can't comprehend the expression you 
created. In the same way it can't do it for


  help(class)

or

  help(def)


or any other keyword.

Diez