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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".
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