names of methods, exported functions

[Michael Hoffman]

Mayer wrote:

> Is there a way to see at the python prompt the names of all the public
> methods of a class or the names exported by a module? I know that
> GUI-based IDEs have a nifty way of displaying these in the form of a
> drop-down list, but I'm looking for some function or method that will
> simply return a list of strings.

Modules generally do not export names[1]. You import a module and 
perhaps specific names within the module. The module can specify which 
names are "public" by the use of the underscore naming convention and 
the magic __all__ name, which can contain a list of those names which 
will be imported by default through "from module import *."

That said, dir() is the function you are looking for. If you want to 
restrict to only methods on the class, and not just all attributes, 
you'll have to check the type of each attribute.
-- 
Michael Hoffman

[1] OK, I have written modules that set a variable in __main__ using 
sys.modules but other than that...