Help

The best place to find help in Python is using the Python documentation which contains information about the Python syntax and about its functions and libraries. It also contains a tutorial and other user guides. The Python documentation is especially helpful when you are not familiar with a function, and so you would like to understand how to use it.

Fig. 4 Searching the Python documentation for the abs() function.

In the example above in Searching the Python documentation for the abs() function., we would like to understand how to use the function abs(). We first search for the abs function in the Python document (panel A). This returns a list of results. The first item in the results returned is what we are looking for as it says that abs is a built-in function (panel B). Upon clicking on that link we are redirected to the Python documentation about abs() (panel C) which provides more information about that function. Note that in the documentation it is defined as abs(x). x here is a parameter, which essentially means that it is a variable in the function definition. This should be distinguished from an argument which is the actual value passed to a function (in abs(-20) -20 is the argument).

Another way to get help on functions is via the help() function. To access this form of help, type help(abs) in the console. This returns a shorter definition of abs() but most of the time this is enough. Essentially you can pass the function you want to know about as an argument to help().

If none of these options was not enough to help you understand what you are looking for, there are several Python resources on the internet that might have more information and provide examples. A simple search sometimes would do the trick!