Unit 1 Getting help()

 

Getting help

The help command provides some help about Python.

>>> help
Type help() for interactive help, or help(object) for help about object.
>>>

We can use the command in two ways. Either we can get some help about a specific object or we enter a interactive help mode.

For example, if we type help(True), we get some information about boolobject

 help() we get the interactive help mode of the interpreter.

>>> help()

Welcome to Python 3.5's help utility!

If this is your first time using Python, you should definitely check out
the tutorial on the Internet at http://docs.python.org/3.5/tutorial/.

Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing
Python programs and using Python modules.  To quit this help utility and
return to the interpreter, just type "quit".

To get a list of available modules, keywords, symbols, or topics, type
"modules", "keywords", "symbols", or "topics".  Each module also comes
with a one-line summary of what it does; to list the modules whose name
or summary contain a given string such as "spam", type "modules spam".

help> 

To leave the help mode and return to the interpreter, we use the quitcommand.

The keywords command gives a list of available keywords in Python programming language.

help> keywords

Here is a list of the Python keywords.  Enter any keyword to get more help.

False               def                 if                  raise
None                del                 import              return
True                elif                in                  try
and                 else                is                  while
as                  except              lambda              with
assert              finally             nonlocal            yield
break               for                 not                 
class               from                or                  
continue            global              pass  

If we type any of the keywords, we get some help on it.

The modules command gives a list of available modules. Again, typing a name of the module will provide additional help.

Finally, we have the topics command.

help> topics

Here is a list of available topics.  Enter any topic name to get more help.

ASSERTION           DELETION            LOOPING             SHIFTING
ASSIGNMENT          DICTIONARIES        MAPPINGMETHODS      SLICINGS
ATTRIBUTEMETHODS    DICTIONARYLITERALS  MAPPINGS            SPECIALATTRIBUTES
ATTRIBUTES          DYNAMICFEATURES     METHODS             SPECIALIDENTIFIERS
AUGMENTEDASSIGNMENT ELLIPSIS            MODULES             SPECIALMETHODS
BASICMETHODS        EXCEPTIONS          NAMESPACES          STRINGMETHODS
BINARY              EXECUTION           NONE                STRINGS
BITWISE             EXPRESSIONS         NUMBERMETHODS       SUBSCRIPTS
BOOLEAN             FLOAT               NUMBERS             TRACEBACKS
CALLABLEMETHODS     FORMATTING          OBJECTS             TRUTHVALUE
CALLS               FRAMEOBJECTS        OPERATORS           TUPLELITERALS
CLASSES             FRAMES              PACKAGES            TUPLES
CODEOBJECTS         FUNCTIONS           POWER               TYPEOBJECTS
COMPARISON          IDENTIFIERS         PRECEDENCE          TYPES
COMPLEX             IMPORTING           PRIVATENAMES        UNARY
CONDITIONAL         INTEGER             RETURNING           UNICODE
CONTEXTMANAGERS     LISTLITERALS        SCOPING             
CONVERSIONS         LISTS               SEQUENCEMETHODS     
DEBUGGING           LITERALS           

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