see: dir for humans

see is an alternative to dir(), for Python 2.7 and 3.4+.

It neatly summarises what you can do with an object. Use it to inspect your code or learn new APIs.

Example

Say you have an object which you'd like to know more about:

>>> from datetime import timedelta

Try inspecting the object with see:

>>> see(timedelta)
    isclass             +                   -
    *                   /                   //
    %                   +obj                -obj
    <                   <=                  ==
    !=                  >                   >=
    abs()               bool()              dir()
    divmod()            hash()              help()
    repr()              str()               .days
    .max                .microseconds       .min
    .resolution         .seconds            .total_seconds()

Here we can discover some things about it, such as:

The object is a class.
You can add something to it with the + operator.
It has a seconds attribute.
It has a total_seconds attribute which is a function.

Compare with the output of dir:

>>> dir(timedelta)
['__abs__', '__add__', '__bool__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '
__dir__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__floordiv__', '__
format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '
__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '
__mul__', '__ne__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__pos__', '__radd__',
 '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rf
loordiv__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__',
'__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__subclassho
ok__', '__truediv__', 'days', 'max', 'microseconds', 'min', 'res
olution', 'seconds', 'total_seconds']

You can filter the results of see using a wildcard pattern or a regular expression:

>>> see(timedelta).filter('*sec*')
    .microseconds       .seconds            .total_seconds()

>>> see(timedelta).filter('/^d/')
    dir()       divmod()

Documentation

Documentation is available at https://ljcooke.github.io/see/.

Contributing

The source code is available from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/ljcooke/see.git

Contributions are welcome.