Python – Introspection
In Python, as you will understand, everything in Python is an object , and the introspection technique is nothing more than code which examines other modules and functions in memory as objects, obtains information about them and those who handle them.
By the way, you will be able to define unnamed functions, call them to functions with unordered arguments, and you can refer to functions whose names we do not know.
Python through its interpreter
It is important to know Python through its interpreter due to several factors:
- Know the classes, their own functions and attributes, through the introspection of the language.
- Availability of consulting the language documentation from the interpreter, for a long time there was no Javadoc type documentation or class diagrams of the language itself, so many Python programmers got used to studying their code in this way, so I recommend that you use the interpret python for that.
- Today there are tools that allow you to generate documentation from Python source codes such as Sphinx .
The easiest way is to start your relationship with Python by simply executing the command python in the following way:
python
Python 2.7.13 (default, Sep 26 2018, 18:42:22)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> |
Must Read: Node.js – Features
You can request the help of the Python interpreter by executing:
>>> help
Type help() for interactive help, or help(object) for help about object.
>>> help()
Welcome to Python 2.7! This is the online help utility.
If this is your first time using Python, you should definitely check out
the tutorial on the Internet at http://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/.
Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing
Python programs and using Python modules. To quit this help utility and
return to the interpreter, just type "quit".
To get a list of available modules, keywords, or topics, type "modules",
"keywords", or "topics". Each module also comes with a one-line summary
of what it does; to list the modules whose summaries contain a given word
such as "spam", type "modules spam". |
To run the available help on Python syntax, run the following command:
help> modules |
Then consult the module’s help os, running:
help> os
Help on module os:
NAME
os - OS routines for NT or Posix depending on what system we're on.
FILE
/usr/lib/python2.7/os.py
MODULE DOCS
https://docs.python.org/library/os
DESCRIPTION
This exports:
- all functions from posix, nt, os2, or ce, e.g. unlink, stat, etc.
- os.path is one of the modules posixpath, or ntpath
- os.name is 'posix', 'nt', 'os2', 'ce' or 'riscos'
- os.curdir is a string representing the current directory ('.' or ':')
- os.pardir is a string representing the parent directory ('..' or '::')
- os.sep is the (or a most common) pathname separator ('/' or ':' or '\\')
- os.extsep is the extension separator ('.' or '/')
- os.altsep is the alternate pathname separator (None or '/')
- os.pathsep is the component separator used in $PATH etc
- os.linesep is the line separator in text files ('\r' or '\n' or '\r\n')
- os.defpath is the default search path for executables
- os.devnull is the file path of the null device ('/dev/null', etc.)
Programs that import and use 'os' stand a better chance of being
portable between different platforms. Of course, they must then
only use functions that are defined by all platforms (e.g., unlink
and opendir), and leave all pathname manipulation to os.path
(e.g., split and join).
|
TrickPress the key |
Then press the Crtl + d key combination to exit help.
Then import the Python standard library called os, with the following command:
>>> import os
>>> |
Previously imported the library you can use the function dir()to list or discover what attributes, methods of the class are available with the import>>> dir(os)
['EX_CANTCREAT', 'EX_CONFIG', 'EX_DATAERR', 'EX_IOERR', 'EX_NOHOST',
'EX_NOINPUT', 'EX_NOPERM', 'EX_NOUSER', 'EX_OK', 'EX_OSERR', 'EX_OSFILE',
'EX_PROTOCOL', 'EX_SOFTWARE', 'EX_TEMPFAIL', 'EX_UNAVAILABLE',
'EX_USAGE', 'F_OK', 'NGROUPS_MAX', 'O_APPEND', 'O_CREAT', 'O_DIRECT',
'O_DIRECTORY', 'O_DSYNC', 'O_EXCL', 'O_LARGEFILE', 'O_NDELAY',
'O_NOCTTY', 'O_NOFOLLOW', 'O_NONBLOCK', 'O_RDONLY', 'O_RDWR', 'O_RSYNC',
'O_SYNC', 'O_TRUNC', 'O_WRONLY', 'P_NOWAIT', 'P_NOWAITO', 'P_WAIT',
'R_OK', 'SEEK_CUR', 'SEEK_END', 'SEEK_SET', 'TMP_MAX', 'UserDict',
'WCONTINUED', 'WCOREDUMP', 'WEXITSTATUS', 'WIFCONTINUED', 'WIFEXITED',
'WIFSIGNALED', 'WIFSTOPPED', 'WNOHANG', 'WSTOPSIG', 'WTERMSIG',
'WUNTRACED', 'W_OK', 'X_OK', '_Environ', '__all__', '__builtins__',
'__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '_copy_reg', '_execvpe', '_exists',
'_exit', '_get_exports_list', '_make_stat_result',
'_make_statvfs_result', '_pickle_stat_result', '_pickle_statvfs_result',
'_spawnvef', 'abort', 'access', 'altsep', 'chdir', 'chmod', 'chown',
'chroot', 'close', 'confstr', 'confstr_names', 'ctermid', 'curdir',
'defpath', 'devnull', 'dup', 'dup2', 'environ', 'errno', 'error',
'execl', 'execle', 'execlp', 'execlpe', 'execv', 'execve', 'execvp',
'execvpe', 'extsep', 'fchdir', 'fdatasync', 'fdopen', 'fork', 'forkpty',
'fpathconf', 'fstat', 'fstatvfs', 'fsync', 'ftruncate', 'getcwd',
'getcwdu', 'getegid', 'getenv', 'geteuid', 'getgid', 'getgroups',
'getloadavg', 'getlogin', 'getpgid', 'getpgrp', 'getpid', 'getppid',
'getsid', 'getuid', 'isatty', 'kill', 'killpg', 'lchown', 'linesep',
'link', 'listdir', 'lseek', 'lstat', 'major', 'makedev', 'makedirs',
'minor', 'mkdir', 'mkfifo', 'mknod', 'name', 'nice', 'open', 'openpty',
'pardir', 'path', 'pathconf', 'pathconf_names', 'pathsep', 'pipe',
'popen', 'popen2', 'popen3', 'popen4', 'putenv', 'read', 'readlink',
'remove', 'removedirs', 'rename', 'renames', 'rmdir', 'sep', 'setegid',
'seteuid', 'setgid', 'setgroups', 'setpgid', 'setpgrp', 'setregid',
'setreuid', 'setsid', 'setuid', 'spawnl', 'spawnle', 'spawnlp',
'spawnlpe', 'spawnv', 'spawnve', 'spawnvp', 'spawnvpe', 'stat',
'stat_float_times', 'stat_result', 'statvfs', 'statvfs_result',
'strerror', 'symlink', 'sys', 'sysconf', 'sysconf_names', 'system',
'tcgetpgrp', 'tcsetpgrp', 'tempnam', 'times', 'tmpfile', 'tmpnam',
'ttyname', 'umask', 'uname', 'unlink', 'unsetenv', 'urandom', 'utime',
'wait', 'wait3', 'wait4', 'waitpid', 'walk', 'write']
>>> |
Another example of use is to be able to use the method fileto determine the location of the imported library in the following way:>>> os.__file__ ‘/usr/lib/python2.7/os.pyc’ >>> |
You can also consult the library documentation by osexecuting the following command:
>>> print os.__doc__
OS routines for NT or Posix depending on what system we're on.
This exports:
- all functions from posix, nt, os2, or ce, e.g. unlink, stat, etc.
- os.path is one of the modules posixpath, or ntpath
- os.name is 'posix', 'nt', 'os2', 'ce' or 'riscos'
- os.curdir is a string representing the current directory ('.' or ':')
- os.pardir is a string representing the parent directory ('..' or '::')
- os.sep is the (or a most common) pathname separator ('/' or ':' or '\\')
- os.extsep is the extension separator ('.' or '/')
- os.altsep is the alternate pathname separator (None or '/')
- os.pathsep is the component separator used in $PATH etc
- os.linesep is the line separator in text files ('\r' or '\n' or '\r\n')
- os.defpath is the default search path for executables
- os.devnull is the file path of the null device ('/dev/null', etc.)
Programs that import and use 'os' stand a better chance of being
portable between different platforms. Of course, they must then
only use functions that are defined by all platforms (e.g., unlink
and opendir), and leave all pathname manipulation to os.path
(e.g., split and join).
>>> |
Execute the exit () command to exit the interpreter…
>>> exit() |