assign output of help to a variable instead of stdout in python

Question

I want to do something like this in the python interpreter.

myhelp = help(myclass)

but the output goes to stdout. Is it possible to assign it to a variable?

Thanks!

Use pydoc... import pydoc; myhelp = pydoc.render_doc(myclass) — AChampion
– AChampion, Commented Sep 24, 2016 at 1:10
@AChampion I can't seem to find a question related to this, maybe it would be good to post your comment as an answer since it is a pretty good concise way to actually store the help data. For anyone else looking to do this, would be helpful as an answer. — idjaw
– idjaw, Commented Sep 24, 2016 at 1:19

Kiran Tomlinson · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-24 01:09:51Z

4

You can capture stdout while help(myclass) runs:

from cStringIO import StringIO
import sys

stdout = sys.stdout
buffer = StringIO()
sys.stdout = buffer

help(myclass)

sys.stdout = stdout

myhelp = buffer.getvalue()

answered Sep 24, 2016 at 1:09

Kiran Tomlinson

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1 Comment

idjaw Over a year ago

Just wanted to add the Python 3 friendly support for this. That to use StringIO, you have to import from io -> from io import StringIO

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