the documentation interlude this part of the book concludes with look at techniques and tools used for documenting python code although python code is designed to be readablea few wellplaced human-accessible comments can do much to help others understand the workings of your programs as we'll seepython includes both syntax and tools to make documentation easier in particularthe pydoc system covered here can render module' internal documentation as either plain text in shellor html in web browser although this is something of tools-related conceptthis topic is presented here partly because it involves python' syntax modeland partly as resource for readers struggling to understand python' toolset for the latter purposei'll also expand here on documentation pointers first given in as usualbecause this closes out its partit also ends with some warnings about common pitfalls and set of exercises for this part of the textin addition to its quiz python documentation sources by this point in the bookyou're probably starting to realize that python comes with an amazing amount of prebuilt functionality--built-in functions and exceptionspredefined object attributes and methodsstandard library modulesand more and we've really only scratched the surface of each of these categories one of the first questions that bewildered beginners often ask ishow do find information on all the built-in toolsthis section provides hints on the various documentation sources available in python it also presents documentation strings (docstringsand the pydoc system that makes use of them these topics are somewhat peripheral to the core language itselfbut they become essential knowledge as soon as your code reaches the level of the examples and exercises in this part of the book as summarized in table - there are variety of places to look for information on pythonwith generally increasing verbosity because documentation is such crucial tool in practical programmingwe'll explore each of these categories in the sections that follow