Reading python documentation in the terminal?

Question

Is there a way to install the python documentation that would make it available as if it was a manpage? (I know you can download the sourcefiles for the documentation and read them in vim, using less or whatever but I was thinking about something a bit less manual. Don't want to roll my own.)

Answer 1

I don't know if that's exactly what you are looking for, but the python interactive console offers a help command. You can use it in the following manner.

>>> help()

Welcome to Python 3.6's help utility!

If this is your first time using Python, you should definitely check out
the tutorial on the Internet at http://docs.python.org/3.6/tutorial/.

Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing
Python programs and using Python modules.  To quit this help utility and
return to the interpreter, just type "quit".

To get a list of available modules, keywords, symbols, or topics, type
"modules", "keywords", "symbols", or "topics".  Each module also comes
with a one-line summary of what it does; to list the modules whose name
or summary contain a given string such as "spam", type "modules spam".

help> list

This will output the whole documentation for all of the list methods.

Answer 2

I don't if this is what you wanted but you everything you can do in IDLE you can do on the command line. Example:

C:>python
>>help(print())
>>help(plt.plot())

This way you can access documentation

Answer 3

It's not an exact copy of the documentation, but there's the builtin help() function.

In an interactive python session, you just call help(whatever_you_want_to_read_about), for example:

>>> help(all)
Help on built-in function all in module builtins:

all(...)
    all(iterable) -> bool

    Return True if bool(x) is True for all values x in the iterable.
    If the iterable is empty, return True.

---

Alternatively, you can start an interactive help session like this:

C:\Users\Rawing>python -c "help()"

Welcome to Python 3.4!  This is the interactive help utility.

help>

And then just type the function/class/module you want to know about:

help> all
Help on built-in function all in module builtins:

all(...)
    all(iterable) -> bool

    Return True if bool(x) is True for all values x in the iterable.
    If the iterable is empty, return True.

Answer 4

On Debian (and derived distributions, like Ubuntu) install pydoc package. Then you can use pydoc whatever command.