The dir() function is designed for interactive use, inspecting objects for the names of attributes and methods.
Here is an enhanced version that allows you to pass a glob to filter the names you see: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577774-enhancing-dir-with-globs/ E.g. instead of this: >>> dir(str) ['__add__', '__class__', ... snip 60+ other names ... 'upper', 'zfill'] you can easily filter the results to show only names that interest you, by passing a glob: >>> dir(str, '*split*') ['rsplit', 'split', 'splitlines'] Comments and improvements welcome. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list