help, dir

The Python language provides two commands to obtain documentation about objects defined in the current scope, both built-in and user-defined.

We can ask for help about an object, for example “1”:

>>> help(1)
Help on int object:
class int(object)
 |  int(x=0) -> int or long
 |  int(x, base=10) -> int or long
 |  
 |  Convert a number or string to an integer, or return 0 if no arguments
 |  are given.  If x is floating point, the conversion truncates towards zero.
 |  If x is outside the integer range, the function returns a long instead.
 |  
 |  If x is not a number or if base is given, then x must be a string or
 |  Unicode object representing an integer literal in the given base.  The
 |  literal can be preceded by '+' or '-' and be surrounded by whitespace.
 |  The base defaults to 10.  Valid bases are 0 and 2-36.  Base 0 means to
 |  interpret the base from the string as an integer literal.
 |  >>> int('0b100', base=0)
 |  4
 |  
 |  Methods defined here:
 |
 |  __abs__(...)
 |      x.__abs__() <==> abs(x)
...

and, since “1” is an integer, we get a description about the int class and all its methods. Here the output has been truncated because it is very long and detailed.

Similarly, we can obtain a list of methods of the object “1” with the command dir:

>>> dir(1)
['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', ...