[Python-Dev] Python 2.1 PEPs

[Guido van Rossum]

> Why the strange check involving inspect.stack()?
> inspect.stack()[1][3] is the co_name of the parent frame.
> If we check that the __repr__ is not being requested by a
> function call, everything works perfectly in IDLE as well
> as the plain interpreter, and the helper object is still safe
> to pass around.  Nothing breaks even if you say help(help).

This is one of the reasons why I didn't want to add this to the 2.1
release at such a late point.  I have no easy way to verify that this
is always true, and in fact I have no idea what inspect.stack()[1][3]
means. :-(

I just add "from pydoc import help" to my $PYTHONSTARTUP file.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)