Bizarre error from help()

[Delaney, Timothy (Tim)]

Roy Smith wrote:

> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/site.py", line 307, in __call__
>     import pydoc
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/pydoc.py", line 49, in ?
>     from string import expandtabs, find, join, lower, split, strip,
> rfind, rstrip
> ImportError: cannot import name expandtabs

Looks most likely that there something messed up with your python
install. What happens if you do:

    >>> from string import expandtabs

? Do you get a similar error?

The lines:

    foos bars bazes
    Foo

look very suspicious - you should instead get:

    Help on built-in function isinstance in module __builtin__:

    isinstance(...)

You may want to see if there's something strange in sitecustomize.py.

Alternatively, since this is in the interactive interpreter, is it
possible that something you'd done before could have caused this?

Tim Delaney