On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 8:10 PM, Veek M <vek.m1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Is there a way to use .pythonrc.py to provide a help function that > autoloads whatever module name is passed like so: > \>>> h(re) > > I tried inheriting site._Helper and overriding __init__ and __call__ but > that didn't work, also I don't know how to deal/trap/catch the NameError > (no quotes on h(re)) - is there a way to insert a try/except block > around the >>> prompt? > > I hate having to: import whatever every-time i forget. Actually could I > ditch the () in h(re) and just do: h re - the joy of that :p
You could use sys.excepthook to catch the NameError. I don't know of a way to catch the SyntaxError and look at the original text, but with NameError it's pretty easy: def excepthook(t,v,tb): if t is NameError: n = v.args[0].split("'")[1] globals()[n] = __import__(n) exec(tb.tb_frame.f_code, tb.tb_frame.f_globals) else: excepthook.old(t,v,tb) import sys excepthook.old = sys.excepthook sys.excepthook = excepthook Paste that into interactive Python and give it a try. Be aware that it'll attempt to import *any* dud name, so it'll potentially slow stuff down any time you typo. Also, it re-executes the current traceback frame, which may or may not be appropriate; it's fine for help(re), but not otherwise. As an alternative, you could inspect tb.tb_frame.f_code to see if it matches "help(x)", and if it does, simply re-execute it with the string form of the name: exec(tb.tb_frame.f_code, tb.tb_frame.f_globals, {n: n}) This works because help('re') does the same thing as help(re), so by effectively setting re="re", you gain that functionality without actually importing into the global namespace. Adequately recognizing help(re) without false positives is left as an exercise for the reader. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list