"""Visit http://diveintopython.net/"""

__author__ = "Mark Pilgrim (mark@diveintopython.org)"


def info(object, spacing=10, collapse=1):
    """Print methods and doc strings.

    Takes module, class, list, dictionary, or string."""
    methodList = [e for e in dir(object) if callable(getattr(object, e))]
    processFunc = collapse and (lambda s: " ".join(s.split())) or (lambda s: s)
    print "\n".join(["%s %s" %
                     (method.ljust(spacing),
                      processFunc(str(getattr(object, method).__doc__)))
                     for method in methodList])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print help.__doc__

有一个很酷的工具叫objexplore。下面是一个简单的例子，关于如何在pandas数据框架上使用它的探索功能。

import pandas as pd
df=pd.read_csv('https://storage.googleapis.com/download.tensorflow.org/data/heart.csv')

from objexplore import explore
explore(df)

将在你的shell中弹出以下内容:

如果这是为了探究发生了什么，我建议查看IPython。这增加了获取对象文档、属性甚至源代码的各种快捷方式。例如，在函数后附加一个"?"将为对象提供帮助(有效地为"help(obj)"提供快捷方式)，而使用两个"?" ("func??")将在可用时显示源代码。

还有很多额外的便利，如制表符补全、结果打印、结果历史记录等，这对于这种探索性编程非常方便。

对于内省的更多编程使用，基本的内置程序，如dir()， vars()， getattr等将是有用的，但值得您花时间检查inspect模块。要获取一个函数的源，使用inspect。例如，将其应用到自身:

>>> print inspect.getsource(inspect.getsource)
def getsource(object):
    """Return the text of the source code for an object.

    The argument may be a module, class, method, function, traceback, frame,
    or code object.  The source code is returned as a single string.  An
    IOError is raised if the source code cannot be retrieved."""
    lines, lnum = getsourcelines(object)
    return string.join(lines, '')

检查。如果处理包装或操作函数，Getargspec通常也很有用，因为它将给出函数参数的名称和默认值。

有一个python代码库构建就是为了这个目的:inspect在python 2.7中介绍过

If you want to look inside a live object, then python's inspect module is a good answer. In general, it works for getting the source code of functions that are defined in a source file somewhere on disk. If you want to get the source of live functions and lambdas that were defined in the interpreter, you can use dill.source.getsource from dill. It also can get the code for from bound or unbound class methods and functions defined in curries... however, you might not be able to compile that code without the enclosing object's code.

>>> from dill.source import getsource
>>> 
>>> def add(x,y):
...   return x+y
... 
>>> squared = lambda x:x**2
>>> 
>>> print getsource(add)
def add(x,y):
  return x+y

>>> print getsource(squared)
squared = lambda x:x**2

>>> 
>>> class Foo(object):
...   def bar(self, x):
...     return x*x+x
... 
>>> f = Foo()
>>> 
>>> print getsource(f.bar)
def bar(self, x):
    return x*x+x

>>> 

已经有很多好的提示了，但还没有提到最短和最简单的(不一定是最好的):

object?