Display Function Code Body?

[Haibao Tang]

Hail Python pals! I played with the R (http://r-project.cran.org) last
night to do some statistics and it has an interactive session too, and
I found a feature that is quite useful.

I found by actually typing a function name, the R gives you a code body
output.

f1 = function(x){x*x}
f1

function(x){x*x}

# more examples (you can try some)

sd

function (x, na.rm = FALSE)
{
if (is.matrix(x))
apply(x, 2, sd, na.rm = na.rm)
else if (is.vector(x))
sqrt(var(x, na.rm = na.rm))
else if (is.data.frame(x))
sapply(x, sd, na.rm = na.rm)
else sqrt(var(as.vector(x), na.rm = na.rm))
}
<environment: namespace:stats>

# ------------------------------------------------
While our python gives an output which is more pro but less
informational.
<function f1 at 0x00F522B0>

What I would like to do is to write a function like disp(), when typed,
it can give you the code infomation.
<function f1 at 0x00F522B0>
def f1(x):
return x*x
<environment: interactive>

# or any shallow function code from a file<function isleap at 0x00F795B0>
def isleap(year):
"""Return 1 for leap years, 0 for non-leap years."""
return year % 4 == 0 and (year % 100 != 0 or year % 400 == 0)
<environment: C:\Python23\Lib\calendar.py>

# surely the compiled function code cannot be displayed<function isleap at 0x00F79B30>
: internal/compiled function
<environment: C:\Python23\DLLs\_blabla.pyd>

Can someone please point out how this can be achieved nicely. I've
tried some text searching approach, too dirty I must say.
Oh! Thank you ...


Haibao Tang

 

[Steven Bethard]

What I would like to do is to write a function like disp(), when typed,
it can give you the code infomation.

Check the docs entitled "Retrieving source code":

http://docs.python.org/lib/inspect-source.html

Depending on what you want, you may be able to use inspect.getsource:

py> import inspect
py> import string
py> print inspect.getsource(string.split)
def split(s, sep=None, maxsplit=-1):
"""split(s [,sep [,maxsplit]]) -> list of strings

Return a list of the words in the string s, using sep as the
delimiter string. If maxsplit is given, splits at no more than
maxsplit places (resulting in at most maxsplit+1 words). If sep
is not specified or is None, any whitespace string is a separator.

(split and splitfields are synonymous)

"""
return s.split(sep, maxsplit)

However, this won't work for functions you've defined interactively I
don't think. On the other hand, if you defined them interactively, you
can just scroll up.

Steve

 

[Fernando Perez]

Hail Python pals! I played with the R (http://r-project.cran.org) last
night to do some statistics and it has an interactive session too, and
I found a feature that is quite useful.
[...]

# or any shallow function code from a file<function isleap at 0x00F795B0>
def isleap(year):
"""Return 1 for leap years, 0 for non-leap years."""
return year % 4 == 0 and (year % 100 != 0 or year % 400 == 0)
<environment: C:\Python23\Lib\calendar.py>

# surely the compiled function code cannot be displayed<function isleap at 0x00F79B30>
: internal/compiled function
<environment: C:\Python23\DLLs\_blabla.pyd>

Can someone please point out how this can be achieved nicely. I've
tried some text searching approach, too dirty I must say.
Oh! Thank you ...

[~/tmp]> ipython
Python 2.3.4 (#1, Oct 26 2004, 16:42:40)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 0.6.7_rc1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
? -> Introduction to IPython's features.
%magic -> Information about IPython's 'magic' % functions.
help -> Python's own help system.
object? -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.

In [1]: import calendar

In [2]: calendar.isleap??
Type: function
Base Class: <type 'function'>
String Form: <function isleap at 0x403bb6bc>
Namespace: Interactive
File: /usr/src/build/475206-i386/install/usr/lib/python2.3/calendar.py
Definition: calendar.isleap(year)
Source:
def isleap(year):
"""Return 1 for leap years, 0 for non-leap years."""
return year % 4 == 0 and (year % 100 != 0 or year % 400 == 0)


Note that the source display won't work for interactively defined functions,
because their source is thrown away by the bytecode compiler. There are
discussions of a PEP for adding a __source__ attribute to functions which would
solve this limitation, but that is still in the future.

Cheers,

f