Let's say that you want to use a Python module or you just heard about one particular module, and you want to find out how it works and what functions are available to you inside that module. For this purpose, Python provides you with two helpful functions in the Python interpreter. To quickly find out more information about the modules, functionality and contents. Let's see these functions in action by opening up the Python interpreter. So let's see that we heard about the SIS module and we want to find out if it can actually help us achieve our goals. As a side note, keep in mind that you should already have the Python module installed.
If it's not a Python built in module, you will learn how to download and install a custom non built in module later in the course, don't worry, for now, we will make use of the default modules. Second of all, don't forget that you should First import that module into the Python interpreter so that Python will be able to access its information. The first function that we're going to discuss is help. So let's apply help on the SIS module and see the results. Import says first help of sis. As you can see, the function returns lots of information about the module.
And if you scroll all the way up to the beginning of this output, you will find out the module name, the reference to its documentation, and finally, a comprehensive description of each of its functions, objects and attributes. Next, the second function is there. This one shows you what names functions or attributes are part of the specified modules namespace. So let's use their on our SIS module and see it's available names as we already did in this course. So let's see this once again. We can see here a list of all the available functions and attributes inside this Module.
For instance, you can notice the path attribute we used earlier to get the Python PATH variable. There it is right here. Keep in mind that these two functions help and deer are there to help you get information about any Python module. So use them whenever you feel uncertain about a module.