Getting 'help()' text in non-interactive manner (Python)

Question

I'd like to get help(obj) text in IPython or Jupyter notebook in a non-interactive manner, into some variable instead of it being displayed.

Note: help provides more information than obj.__doc__ provides, so that's not quite an alternative.

Answer 1

Short answer:

import pydoc
help_result_string = pydoc.render_doc(obj)

Longer answer:

When you call help(obj), it is a wrapper to pydoc.help(obj) (see help.__doc__), which is the same as pydoc.Helper()(obj) (from pydoc source: help = Helper()), which usually leads to pydoc.doc(obj), which writes the resulting string from pydoc.render_doc(obj) to the standard output or a pager, depending on the system.

Details on what other things can happen when help(obj) is called can be found in the pydoc source code.