pdir 0.2

A Selective, Pretty dir printing utility for Python.

pdir: Selective, Pretty dir printing utlity for Python

dir() is a very useful utility function in python which returns a list of names comprising the attributes of the given object, and of attributes reachable from it. However, a lot many times all those names can be bugging. Say you are really interested in knowing only the useful methods a Python “list” offers. And you do not like the unreadable, unfiltered mess resulting from using “dir(list)”.

Then pdir should be very useful for you. I wrote this bit because something like this is very helpful to me, who quickly needs a list of only the important functions a namespace offers; and likes reading clean pretty stuff.

Quickstart

You can use import the pdir function from pdir after installing this package, and consider it as your new dir() friend.

An example:

>>> from pdir import pdir
>>> from collections import list
>>> pdir(list)
['append',
 'count',
 'extend',
 'index',
 'insert',
 'pop',
 'remove',
 'reverse',
 'sort']

Now lets compare this with what dir(list) prints:

>>> dir(list)
['__add__', '__class__', .........................................................
..................................................................................
'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

Some of the elements are substituted with dots (…) here.

Wasn’t the earlier one clean and better?

pdir > v0.1 also ships with a help utility (alpha)

>>> pdir(list,help=True)
-append-
L.append(object) -- append object to end-

-count- L.count(value) -> integer – return number of occurrences of value-

-extend- L.extend(iterable) – extend list by appending elements from the iterable-

pd is also available in the new version as an alternative conveneint reference to the pdir function.

>> from pdir import pd >> pd(list)

Notes

• pdir is essentially a wrapper around the existing dir function.

• I will be trying to add interesting regular expressions support to further filter out pdir results.

• Anyone who is interested in the code can see it here.

• Its at its very rudimentary stage of development and some of its features may be unstable.