Where read() is documented

[Chris Green]

Stefan Ram <ram at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> writes:
> >I went to sys.stdin but it didn't really lead me easily to the read()
> >method.  All I actually wanted to know was what was the type of the
> >return value of the read() method which is different in Python 2 and 3.
> 
> |>>> import sys
> |>>> >>> sys.stdin.read
> <built-in method read of _io.TextIOWrapper object at 0x000000000015EBA0>
> |>>> help(sys.stdin.read)
> |Help on built-in function read:
> |
> |read(size=-1, /) method of _io.TextIOWrapper instance
> |    Read at most n characters from stream.
> |
> |    Read from underlying buffer until we have n characters or we hit EOF.
> |    If n is negative or omitted, read until EOF.
> |
> |>>> type(sys.stdin.read())
> |^Z
> |<class 'str'>
> 
>   Note that above it's called a "method" twice and once
>   a "function".
> 
>   (If I would have written the body of the documentation,
>   I'd use "size" instead of "n" and clearly separate 
>   effects and results, e.g.,
> 
> |EFFECTS
> |
> |If <size> is not negative, read from underlying buffer until
> |<size> characters are read or until EOF was read. If <size>
> |is negative or omitted, read until EOF.
> |
> |RESULT
> |
> |The string read, type str, excluding a possible EOF read.
> 
Yes, I must admit I tend to forget about the 'built-in' documentation
that Python has.  Coming from assembler, C and C++ one doesn't expect
it, so I'm afraid I tend to search the on-line Python documentation.
Usually I find what I want but in this particular case I didn't.  I
must remember the interactive prompt!

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Green
·