#pydoc

Discovered the dir() function last week.

For the uninitiated, dir() is a built-in function (doesn't require extra libraries) that gives you information about an object. Example useage: dir(class) will give you a list of the methods in that class.

So some construction was done on our apartment and they managed to drop our internet cable hookup through the wall to the first floor. This couldn't have happend at a worse time because I am busy working on my senior project which is in Python. Anyways long story short pydoc was their to save the day!

Pydoc

Like most of my peers when I have a programming question (or any question really) I immediatly go to google for an answer. However without internet I remembered a super handy Python utility called pydoc. Using the command:

pydoc -p 9000

I was able to navigate the python documentation in my browser as if I had an internet connection.

Some time ago I wrote about perldoc being perl's killer app. I still think that's true. Recently I've been going through my python code and attempting to add useful comments that could be picked up by some auto documenting mechanism. Clearly they exist... python.org is full of doc and I'm certain it's rendered.

Included with python, since 2.1, is pydoc. At first glance it appears to be an analog to perldoc; and for the most part it isn't.

pydoc will generate text or html - perldoc will convert the poddoc to html, latex, man, text

pydoc has a graphic UI embedded - but it requires TK (and x-windows)

pydoc has an embedded http server - could leak important data if the pydoc is internal use only.

perldoc generates static files - pydoc generates dynamic files

pydoc recurses the class dependency tree - if the stack is deep the document is long (there is a lesson in this)

In a way, it's nice that pydoc scans your code looking for your comments in your classes etc. The format makes sense and it's not all that terrible. There are even ways to comment individual functions instead of just one monster perldoc (as typically demonstrated)

  So perldoc is still the killer app.