[SciPy-user] best way of finding a function

[Fernando Perez]

On 4/27/07, Francesc Altet <faltet at carabos.com> wrote:
> El dv 27 de 04 del 2007 a les 11:49 -0500, en/na Trevis Crane va
> escriure:
> > OK thank you.  But in the generalized case, for you guys/gals who are
> > more experienced, when looking for a function for the first time, is
> > this what you usually do -- Google it?
>
> Google helps a lot indeed.
>
> I use also quite a lot the TAB key in IPython, and the '?' mark after a
> name function that I'm not sure if it is what I'm after.  When this
> technique is used in combination with packages that are hierarchically
> structured (i.e. subpackages of subpackages) like SciPy is, this turns
> out to be stunningly effective (at least for me).

The following little trick in ipython is also worth knowing about:

In [2]: import numpy

In [3]: numpy.*cos*?
numpy.arccos
numpy.arccosh
numpy.cos
numpy.cosh


Cheers,

f