Newbie: What are the rules wrt constructing PYDOC keywords

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:48:16 -0800, paulsendave wrote:

> Still learning python (2.4) and have instructions that all of our
> python scripts should be SelfDoc'ing via pydoc standards.
> 
> One thing that isn't clear to me is how pydoc searches for keywords.  I
> believe that there might be certain rules for putting keywords together
> under the SYNOPSIS and search paths that "pydoc -k" uses that aren't
> obvious to me.
> 
> (Of course, it'd be a good training exercise to read through pydoc.py
> itself and figure it out for myself, and I might just do that, but for
> the moment, there are other priorities.)

I'd love to help you, and I just might do that, but for the moment there
are other priorities.

Honestly, do you really expect to have people do your work for you, for
free, when you all but say "I could answer this myself but I'm too lazy"?

You might want to read this:

http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

At least make a bit of an effort first. Or if you can't/won't make an
effort, don't rub people's nose in the fact.

E.g. you might like to tell us what behaviour leads you to believe there
are "certain rules". Explain how you think pydoc searches for keywords,
and what behaviour your guess doesn't explain. 



-- 
Steven