|
New in version 2.1.
The pydoc module automatically generates documentation from
Python modules. The documentation can be presented as pages of text
on the console, served to a Web browser, or saved to HTML files.
The built-in function help() invokes the online help system
in the interactive interpreter, which uses pydoc to generate
its documentation as text on the console. The same text documentation
can also be viewed from outside the Python interpreter by running
pydoc as a script at the operating system's command prompt.
For example, running
at a shell prompt will display documentation on the sys
module, in a style similar to the manual pages shown by the Unix
man command. The argument to pydoc can be the name
of a function, module, or package, or a dotted reference to a class,
method, or function within a module or module in a package. If the
argument to pydoc looks like a path (that is, it contains the
path separator for your operating system, such as a slash in Unix),
and refers to an existing Python source file, then documentation is
produced for that file.
Specifying a -w flag before the argument will cause HTML
documentation to be written out to a file in the current directory,
instead of displaying text on the console.
Specifying a -k flag before the argument will search the
synopsis lines of all available modules for the keyword given as the
argument, again in a manner similar to the Unix man
command. The synopsis line of a module is the first line of its
documentation string.
You can also use pydoc to start an HTTP server on the local
machine that will serve documentation to visiting Web browsers.
pydoc -p 1234 will start a HTTP server on port
1234, allowing you to browse the documentation at
http://localhost:1234/ in your preferred Web browser.
pydoc -g will start the server and additionally
bring up a small Tkinter-based graphical interface to help
you search for documentation pages.
When pydoc generates documentation, it uses the current
environment and path to locate modules. Thus, invoking
pydoc spam documents precisely the version of
the module you would get if you started the Python interpreter and
typed "import spam".
Module docs for core modules are assumed to reside in
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/. This can be overridden by
setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable to a different URL or
to a local directory containing the Library Reference Manual pages.
Release 2.5.2, documentation updated on 21th February, 2008.
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.
|
