The built-in function dir is used to find out which names a module defines. It returns a sorted list of strings:
>>> import fibo, sys >>> dir(fibo) ['__name__', 'fib', 'fib2'] >>> dir(sys) ['__name__', 'argv', 'builtin_module_names', 'copyright', 'exit', 'maxint', 'modules', 'path', 'ps1', 'ps2', 'setprofile', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout', 'version'] >>>Without arguments, dir() lists the names you have defined currently:
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] >>> import fibo, sys >>> fib = fibo.fib >>> dir() ['__name__', 'a', 'fib', 'fibo', 'sys'] >>>Note that it lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, etc.
dir() does not list the names of built-in functions and variables. If you want a list of those, they are defined in the standard module __builtin__:
>>> import __builtin__ >>> dir(__builtin__) ['AccessError', 'AttributeError', 'ConflictError', 'EOFError', 'IOError', 'ImportError', 'IndexError', 'KeyError', 'KeyboardInterrupt', 'MemoryError', 'NameError', 'None', 'OverflowError', 'RuntimeError', 'SyntaxError', 'SystemError', 'SystemExit', 'TypeError', 'ValueError', 'ZeroDivisionError', '__name__', 'abs', 'apply', 'chr', 'cmp', 'coerce', 'compile', 'dir', 'divmod', 'eval', 'execfile', 'filter', 'float', 'getattr', 'hasattr', 'hash', 'hex', 'id', 'input', 'int', 'len', 'long', 'map', 'max', 'min', 'oct', 'open', 'ord', 'pow', 'range', 'raw_input', 'reduce', 'reload', 'repr', 'round', 'setattr', 'str', 'type', 'xrange'] >>>