On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 12:58 AM, Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> wrote: > In addition to print and type, I'm a big fan of dir(). Often, I know an > object has a method to do what I want, but I can't remember the name. > For example, the other day, I was using a set (which I don't use very > often). I needed the method to remove an item from the set. Faster > than finding the right place in the docs, I just fired up an interpreter > and typed dir(set()) at it.
That's excellent when all you need is the name. I usually have IDLE running (all the time - which sometimes produces oddities after I experiment with monkey-patching some module or other, and then oddly enough, things don't work properly!!), and will snap off "help(foo)" for any foo. Unfortunately help() is at times unhelpful, and even at its best it's very spammy. There's no one best solution; the successful programmer will usually have a large toolset at his disposal. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
