see 1.1.0

A human-readable alternative to dir

An alternative to Python’s dir function. Easy to type; easy to read! For humans only.

Requirements: Python 2.4+ or 3.0

License: BSD (see the LICENSE file)

Contributions are welcome. See the CHANGELOG and AUTHORS files.

Install

To install see, run:

$ pip install --upgrade see

Alternatively, to install from source:

$ python setup.py install

Usage

see is designed for the interactive Python interpreter. Import the see function like so:

>>> from see import see

Call see() without arguments to see all objects in the global scope.

>>> foo = 'bar'
>>> see()
    foo      see()

Call see(an_object) to see what you can do with an_object.

>>> number = 1
>>> see(number)
    +             -             *             /             //            %
    **            <<            >>            &             ^             |
    +obj          -obj          ~             <             <=            ==
    !=            >             >=            abs()         bool()
    divmod()      float()       hash()        help()        hex()
    int()         long()        oct()         repr()        str()
    .bit_length()               .conjugate()  .denominator  .imag
    .numerator    .real

Startup

You can use a Python startup file to ensure that see is available every time you run Python. The following example uses a startup file named .pythonrc.py in the user’s home directory:

1. Create a startup file, if one does not already exist:

   touch ~/.pythonrc.py

2. Open the startup file in your preferred Python editor and add the following line:

   from see import see

3. Set the following environment variable (e.g. in ~/.bashrc for Bash):

   export PYTHONSTARTUP="$HOME/.pythonrc.py"

Now you can use see immediately after running python, without having to manually import it.

Startup for iPython

For iPython users, importing see by default requires a little more work.

1. Create a file named ipy_profile_see.py in your ~/.ipython directory, and add the following lines:

   from IPython import ipapi
   
   def main():
       ip = ipapi.get()
       ip.ex('from see import see')
   
   main()

2. From here, you have two options:

   1. Launch iPython with the command: ipython -profile see

   2. Open ~/.ipython/ipy_user_conf.py and add the following line inside the main() function:

      import ipy_profile_see