Store contents of help() in a variable: Python

Question

When we use the help() function it just displays the text and I can't store it in a variable...

h = help ( 'eval' ) # Doesn't work

So what do I do? And if I need to use PyDoc, how do I do it?

Answer 1

The simple way it to use the __doc__ attribute as @Thomas said

If you want the exact output as what help(something) gives, then use

import contextlib
import io

out_io = io.StringIO()

with contextlib.redirect_stdout(out_io):
    help(eval)

out_io.seek(0)
# out has what you're looking for
out = out_io.read()

Explanation:

contextlib.redirect_stdout temporarily patches sys.stdout to any file like object you pass it

We pass in a StringIO object as the file-like object and it gets the printed value written to it

Then finally the StringIO object is seeked back to the start and read from

Answer 2

The __doc__ attribute is what you're looking for:

>>> h = eval.__doc__
>>> h
'Evaluate the given source in the context of globals and locals.\n\nThe source may be a string representing a Python expression\nor a code object as returned by compile().\nThe globals must be a dictionary and locals can be any mapping,\ndefaulting to the current globals and locals.\nIf only globals is given, locals defaults to it.'