python “help” function: printing docstrings

Question

Is there an option to print the output of help(\'myfun\'). The behaviour I\'m seeing is that output is printed to std.out and the script waits for user input (i.e. type \'q\

Answer 1

You've already seen reference to the docstring, the magic __doc__ variable which holds the body of the help:

def foo(a,b,c): 
   ''' DOES NOTHING!!!! '''
   pass

print foo.__doc__ # DOES NOTHING!!!!

To get the name of a function, you just use __name__:

def foo(a,b,c): pass

print foo.__name__ # foo

The way to get the signature of a function which is not built in you can use the func_code property and from that you can read its co_varnames:

def foo(a,b,c): pass
print foo.func_code.co_varnames # ('a', 'b', 'c')

I've not found out how to do the same for built in functions.