How to search the Python manuals

JBW wilson at afn.org
Sat Aug 23 17:00:57 EDT 2008


On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:17:16 -0400, Terry Reedy instructs a procedure for 
locating the behavior of default function arguments:

> -------------------------------------- For WinXP (I have no idea of how
> the manuals works elsewhere):

Windows is against my religion, so I may be completely off base here :)

> <... snip prolonged clicky-clicky tap dance instructions. ...>

The way I read it is that one has little trouble answering a question by 
reading the documentation if one knows *exactly* where to look.  

It is much easier to find where to look if the documentation corpus has a 
proper index.  Since indexing is hard work that's effectively impossible 
to automate, I suspect Python's documentation is no better than many 
other open-source software projects.

I learned what little Python I know from Martelli's book, which is quite 
well indexed. Those last 80 pages are very well worn.

Jim Wilson
Gainesville, FL




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