So what I'm looking for here is something like PHP's print_r function.
This is so I can debug my scripts by seeing what's the state of the object in question.
You are really mixing together two different things.
Use dir()
, vars()
or the inspect
module to get what you are interested in (I use __builtins__
as an example; you can use any object instead).
>>> l = dir(__builtins__)
>>> d = __builtins__.__dict__
Print that dictionary however fancy you like:
>>> print l
['ArithmeticError', 'AssertionError', 'AttributeError',...
or
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(l)
['ArithmeticError',
'AssertionError',
'AttributeError',
'BaseException',
'DeprecationWarning',
...
>>> pprint(d, indent=2)
{ 'ArithmeticError': <type 'exceptions.ArithmeticError'>,
'AssertionError': <type 'exceptions.AssertionError'>,
'AttributeError': <type 'exceptions.AttributeError'>,
...
'_': [ 'ArithmeticError',
'AssertionError',
'AttributeError',
'BaseException',
'DeprecationWarning',
...
Pretty printing is also available in the interactive debugger as a command:
(Pdb) pp vars()
{'__builtins__': {'ArithmeticError': <type 'exceptions.ArithmeticError'>,
'AssertionError': <type 'exceptions.AssertionError'>,
'AttributeError': <type 'exceptions.AttributeError'>,
'BaseException': <type 'exceptions.BaseException'>,
'BufferError': <type 'exceptions.BufferError'>,
...
'zip': <built-in function zip>},
'__file__': 'pass.py',
'__name__': '__main__'}