hamelin / helphelp

Get help on Python modules, classes and functions

Command-line help on Python modules, classes and functions

This package procures the command-line tool pyh. It works somewhat like UNIX's man, but for Python's docstring-based help system. In a nutshell:

$ pyh print
print(...)
    print(value, ..., sep=' ', end='\n', file=sys.stdout, flush=False)

    Prints the values to a stream, or to sys.stdout by default.
    Optional keyword arguments:
    file:  a file-like object (stream); defaults to the current sys.stdout.
    sep:   string inserted between values, default a space.
    end:   string appended after the last value, default a newline.
    flush: whether to forcibly flush the stream.

A more complex example:

$ pyh pathlib Path.is_file
Help on function is_file in module pathlib:

is_file(self)
    Whether this path is a regular file (also True for symlinks pointing
    to regular files).

To shorten the command lines a bit, one can configure a set of their favorite aliases for modules names in file $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pyh/aliases (which typically resolves to $HOME/.config/pyh/aliases). The alias file is written in the NestedText format, which looks similar to YAML. One simply encodes an alias-to-module name dictionary, one line per entry. Example:

pd: pandas
pl: pathlib
ap: argparse

---

Installing

pip install pyh

Development

Setting up the development environment relies on Conda. Clone the repository, cd into the local copy, then

$ conda env create

Dependent packages are managed through the environment.yml file. When changing dependencies, update the development environment with command

$ conda env update