Pydoc is the standard documentation module for the programming language Python. Similar to the functionality of Perldoc within Perl and Javadoc within Java, Pydoc allows Python programmers to access Python's documentation help files, generate text and HTML pages with documentation specifics, and find the appropriate module for a particular job.
Pydoc can be accessed from a module-specific GUI, from within the Python interpreter, or from a command line shell.
Developed by Ka-Ping Yee, it is included by default in all versions of Python since Python 2.1 and is available for download for 1.5.2, 1.6, and 2.0.
Pydoc is used to extract documentation from the source code itself. More comprehensive documentation is generated from external reStructuredText documents using the Sphinx documentation system.
See also
- Free and open-source software portal
External links
- Archive of Pydoc for Python versions 1.5 to 2.5
- Open source package library for PyPI
- Sphinx documentation
References
Pydoc. Accessed 11/27/2010 http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/stdlib/pydoc-module.html ↩
Using Pydoc. Accessed 11/27/2010 http://onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/04/18/pydoc.html ↩
Pydoc. Accessed 11/27/2010 http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/stdlib/pydoc-module.html ↩
Charming Python: pydoc and distutils modules. Accessed 01/01/2012 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cpmod/index.html ↩
"Ka-Ping Yee: Curriculum Vitae". http://zesty.ca/cv.html ↩
"PEP 256 -- Docstring Processing System Framework". https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0256/ ↩
Charming Python: pydoc and distutils modules. Accessed 01/01/2012 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cpmod/index.html ↩