Question

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.

Answer 1

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__'}