How to see function signature in Python?

Question

Is there a way to introspect a function so that it shows me information on the arguments it takes (like number of args, type if possible, name of arguments if named) and the return value? dir() doesn't seem to do what I want. The __doc__ string sometimes includes method/function arguments, but often doesn't.

Answer 1

help(the_funcion) should give you all of that information.

Sample:

>>> help(enumerate)
Help on class enumerate in module __builtin__:

class enumerate(object)
 |  enumerate(iterable[, start]) -> iterator for index, value of iterable
 |
 |  Return an enumerate object.  iterable must be another object that supports
 |  iteration.  The enumerate object yields pairs containing a count (from
 |  start, which defaults to zero) and a value yielded by the iterable argument
 |  enumerate is useful for obtaining an indexed list:
 |      (0, seq[0]), (1, seq[1]), (2, seq[2]), ...
 |
 |  Methods defined here:
 |
 |  __getattribute__(...)
 |      x.__getattribute__('name') <==> x.name
 |
 |  __iter__(...)
 |      x.__iter__() <==> iter(x)
 |
 |  next(...)
 |      x.next() -> the next value, or raise StopIteration
 |
 |  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 |  Data and other attributes defined here:
 |
 |  __new__ = <built-in method __new__ of type object>
 |      T.__new__(S, ...) -> a new object with type S, a subtype of T