Foundations Updated 2026-09 View as Markdown

Code Introspection

Code introspection is the ability to examine classes, functions and keywords to know what they are, what they do and what they know.

Code introspection is the ability to examine classes, functions and keywords to know what they are, what they do and what they know.

Python provides several functions and utilities for code introspection.

help()
dir()
hasattr()
id()
type()
repr()
callable()
issubclass()
isinstance()
__doc__
__name__

Often the most important one is the help function, since you can use it to find what other functions do.

# Define the Vehicle class
class Vehicle:
    name = ""
    kind = "car"
    color = ""
    value = 100.00
    def description(self):
        desc_str = "%s is a %s %s worth $%.2f." % (self.name, self.color, self.kind, self.value)
        return desc_str

# Print a list of all attributes of the Vehicle class.
print(dir(Vehicle))