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Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

You're reading from   Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja Over 70 recipes that uncover powerful programming tactics in Python

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Product type Paperback
Published in May 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781788294874
Length 380 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Tools
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Author (1):
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Cody Jackson Cody Jackson
Author Profile Icon Cody Jackson
Cody Jackson
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Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Working with Python Modules FREE CHAPTER 2. Utilizing the Python Interpreter 3. Working with Decorators 4. Using Python Collections 5. Generators, Coroutines, and Parallel Processing 6. Working with Python's Math Module 7. Improving Python Performance with PyPy 8. Python Enhancement Proposals 9. Documenting with LyX 10. Other Books You May Enjoy

Using PyDoc help


If you use docstrings appropriately, you can harness the power of PyDoc, which is a built-in Python toolset that can extract docstrings and other information and format them into easy-to-read text. While there are many other tools available, PyDoc comes with Python, so you can be sure of it being available (as long as you have access to the Python standard library).

How to do it...

  1. PyDoc is accessed by using the help() function, as seen previously. While built-in objects can have multiple pages of information, your code doesn't have to be as elaborate, unless you want it to be. Depending on the Python version being used, you don't have to import the module you want help on, but it is generally better to import it, just to make sure.

 

  1. Looking back at the preceding random() example, you can see that a lot of information is available via help(); of course, it is all dependent on how much information the developer decides to put into the docstrings. Functionally, the output is...
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