showing help(M) when running module M standalone

[Thomas Heller]

Chris <c at cdot.de> writes:

> hello,
> I have a small module which only contains some utility functions. when
> running this standalone I would like to show the module docs and each
> function docs, as if doing
>
> 	import M
> 	help(M)
>
> I came up with the following but I reckon there is a much simpler way?
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>      print __doc__
>      print "\nFUNCTIONS:\n"
>      for x in __all__:
>          print x
>          exec "print " + x + ".__doc__"
>
> Works but does not seem right using exec for such a task.
>
> any hint would be great!

if __name__ == "__main__":
    help("__main__")

The only downside is that the module name is printed as '__main__'.

Thomas