[IPython-dev] Integrating pandas into pylab

[Mark Voorhies]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 10:36:30 am Satrajit Ghosh wrote:
<snip>
> i think scientific computing in python would do very well if some mechanism
> like 'lookfor' provided users (especially new users) a good way to find
> functionality. i don't think the flat namespace solves this problem.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> satra
> 

pydoc.ModuleScanner can do keyword searches of modules.  As is, it's a bit slow,
searches only synopsis lines, and is a bit fragile (e.g., raises an uncaught
exception when scanning one of the modules from the Ubuntu pymol package),
but it might be a good starting point.  Or perhaps it would be easier to hook
into the module scanning that IPython does for tab-completion of import?

I use help.search() in R for exactly this purpose, so I certainly think it would be useful.
(For matplotlib and networkx, I currently search through pydoc in firefox or grep the
sources).

--Mark