Question

For example, a list.

l1 = [1, 5 , 7]
How do I check the methods that it has?

(l1.append, for example)

Or a string…
string.lower(

Answer 1

You can use dir to get a list the methods of any object. This is very useful in the interactive prompt:

>>> dir(l1)
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__delslice__', '__doc__', '__eq__',
'__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__',
'__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__',
'__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__',
'__str__', 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

The interesting methods are usually those not starting with underscores. You can write your own version of dir that ignores names starting with underscores if you wish:

>>> mydir = lambda a:[x for x in dir(a) if not x.startswith('_')]
>>> mydir([])
['append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']