Python-dired - Emacs Minor-Mode for Viewing Python Objects/Functions/Modules/Etc…

Overview

This minor mode implements 2 functions to view objects, functions, and modules in the current interactive python session in emacs. The functionality is heavily inspired by the Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) rdired functionality:

https://ess.r-project.org/Manual/ess.html#Rdired

The python-dired minor mode has 2 functions that allow inspection of all objects, functions, and modules in the current session and inspection of individual objects, functions, and modules. Calling either function will create a separate buffer to view information in.

The two functions are:

1. python-dired - provides a buffer with information on the objects, functions, and modules in the current python session. Uses

(python-shell-send-string-no-output "%whos" (python-shell-get-process))

to get output.

1. python-dired-inspect-object - for use in the python-dired buffer. This function uses

(python-shell-send-string-no-output object (python-shell-get-process)))

to display the object at point in a separate buffer.

Keybindings

The following keybindings are defined in the buffers created by the python-dired functions:

(define-key map (kbd "n")   'next-line)
(define-key map (kbd "p")   'previous-line)
(define-key map (kbd "RET") 'python-dired-inspect-object)
(define-key map (kbd "k")   (lambda ()
                                  (interactive)
                                  (if (string= (buffer-name) "*Python-Objects*")
                                      (kill-buffer-and-window) (kill-buffer))))

The final binding, “k”, provides a simple way of quickly killing the buffers created by python-dired-mode. If the buffer was created by ‘python-dired-inspect-object’, pressing “k” will kill the buffer, returning the user to the python-dired buffer. If “k” is pressed while in the python-dired buffer, both the buffer and window will be deleted.