Getting module object from module name

[R. Jain]

I have a requirement where, I have to iterate over a directory, and for every python file in that directory, I have to print its documentation..
Now, one problem I am facing in this is: - "To get the module object from the module name, so that I can USE __doc__ attribute printed"
The code I have written so far is: -
for eachFile in os.listdir(cwd): if os.path.isfile(eachFile): filename, extension = os.path.splitext(eachFile) if extension == '.py': if '__doc__' in dir(filename): try: ## print '%s \t\t %s' % (filename, " ".join(sys.modules[filename].__doc__.split())) pathToModule = cwd + os.sep + filename + extension print '%s \t\t %s' % (filename, " ".join(inspect.getmodulename(pathToModule).__doc__.split())) except KeyError, e: print 'Error :', e else: print 'No doc for module: ', filename
This is my main chunk of code..
Every time I print the "doc", the documentation of string module gets printed..
What I can I change in this??
As in the above code: - I have tried to use (sys.modules[modulename] ) also..
But, it is working for some module, and not for other...

E.g:- sys.modules['abc'] is working fine., but sys.modules['aifc'] is not working..
I'm trying to print doc for all the python files under Python Standard Lib directory.

[chris webster]

As you know, I'm new to Python, but maybe the reason you keep getting the doc-string for the string class is because you are calling __doc__ on a string (the name)?

This blog post might be relevant for you: http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2012/07/31/advanced-python-how-to-dynamically-load-modules-or-classes/

Not sure if I understand what you're doing, but you can use __import__ and getattr to get a handle on a module or class so you can call __doc__ on the module/class e.g. to get the doc-string for the os module and the os.path class (on Python 3):

def main():
    module = __import__('os')
    cls = getattr(module,'path')
    print("Doc for module: ")
    print( module.__doc__)
    print('=======')
    print("Doc for path: ")
    print( cls.__doc__)

This produces the following output:

Doc for module: 
OS routines for Mac, NT, or Posix depending on what system we're on.

This exports:
  - all functions from posix, nt, os2, or ce, e.g. unlink, stat, etc.
  - os.path is either posixpath or ntpath
  - os.name is either 'posix', 'nt', 'os2' or 'ce'.
  - os.curdir is a string representing the current directory ('.' or ':')
  - os.pardir is a string representing the parent directory ('..' or '::')
  - os.sep is the (or a most common) pathname separator ('/' or ':' or '\\')
  - os.extsep is the extension separator (always '.')
  - os.altsep is the alternate pathname separator (None or '/')
  - os.pathsep is the component separator used in $PATH etc
  - os.linesep is the line separator in text files ('\r' or '\n' or '\r\n')
  - os.defpath is the default search path for executables
  - os.devnull is the file path of the null device ('/dev/null', etc.)

Programs that import and use 'os' stand a better chance of being
portable between different platforms.  Of course, they must then
only use functions that are defined by all platforms (e.g., unlink
and opendir), and leave all pathname manipulation to os.path
(e.g., split and join).

=======
Doc for path: 
Common pathname manipulations, WindowsNT/95 version.

Instead of importing this module directly, import os and refer to this
module as os.path.

[R. Jain]

Thank you so much Chris.. That worked