How do I export the output of Python's built-in help() function

Question

I\'ve got a python package which outputs considerable help text from: help(package)

I would like to export this help text to a file, in the format in w

Answer 1

pydoc.render_doc(thing) to get thing's help text as a string. Other parts of pydoc like pydoc.text and pydoc.html can help you write it to a file.

Using the -w modifier in linux will write the output to a html in the current directory, for example;

pydoc -w Rpi.GPIO

Puts all the help() text that would be presented from the command help(Rpi.GPIO) into a nicely formatted file Rpi.GPIO.html, in the current directory of the shell

Answer 2

An old question but the newer recommended generic solution (for Python 3.4+) for writing the output of functions that print() to terminal is using contextlib.redirect_stdout:

import contextlib

def write_help(func, out_file):
    with open(out_file, 'w') as f:
        with contextlib.redirect_stdout(f):
            help(func)

Usage example:

write_help(int, 'test.txt')

Answer 3

The simplest way to do that is via using

sys module

it opens a data stream between the operation system and it's self , it grab the data from the help module then save it in external file

file="str.txt";file1="list.txt"
out=sys.stdout
sys.stdout=open('str_document','w')
help(str)
sys.stdout.close