Python introspection: description of the parameters a function takes

Question

Is there is a tool similar to dir() for modules that will tell me what parameters a given function takes? For instance, I would like to do something like dir(os.rename) and have it tell me what parameters are documented so that I can avoid checking the documentation online, and instead use only the Python scripting interface to do this.

Answer 1

I realize that you're more interested in help(thing) or thing.__doc__, but if you're trying to do programmatic introspection (instead of human-readable documentation) to find out about calling a function, then you can use the inspect module, as discussed in this question.

Answer 2

help(thing) pretty prints all the docstrings that are in the module, method, whatever ...