control structures and functions online documentation although this book provides solid coverage of the python language and the built-in functions and most commonly used modules in the standard librarypython' online documentation provides considerable amount of reference documentationboth on the languageand particularly on python' extensive standard library the documentation is available online at docs python org and is also provided with python itself on windows the documentation is supplied in the windows help file format click start-all programs-python -python manuals to launch the windows help browser this tool has both an index and search function that makes finding documentation easy unix users have the documentation in html format in addition to the hyperlinksthere are various index pages there is also very convenient quick search function available on the left-hand side of each page the most frequently used online document for new users is the library referenceand for experienced users the global module index both of these have links to pages covering python' entire standard library--and in the case of the library referencelinks to pages covering all of python' built-in functionality as well it is well worth skimming through the documentationparticularly the library reference or the global module indexto see what python' standard library offersand clicking through to the documentation of whichever topics are of interest this should provide an initial impression of what is available and should also help you to establish mental picture of where you can find the documentation you are interested in ( brief summary of python' standard library is provided in help is also available from the interpreter itself if you call the builtin help(function with no argumentsyou will enter the online help system--simply follow the instructions to get the information you wantand type "qor "quitto return to the interpreter if you know what module or data type you want help onyou can call help(with the module or data type as its argument for examplehelp(strprovides information on the str data typeincluding all of its methodshelp(dict updateprovides information on the dict collection data type' update(methodand help(osdisplays information about the os module (providing it has been importedonce familiar with pythonit is often sufficient to just be reminded about what attributes ( what methodsa data type provides this information is available using the dir(function--for exampledir(strlists all the string methodsand dir(oslists all the os module' constants and functions (againproviding the module has been imported