Help on using erlang for a module function
I am working in a shell and I want to view the help for a function io:format/1
.
My thought path looks like this:
- execute
help()
- I find the commandm().
- execute
m(io)
- I see a list of functions in the moduleio
Question: How can I expand the help system for a function io:format/1
from the erlang shell?
Exit from help().
:
1> help().
...
m(Mod) -- information about module <Mod>
memory() -- memory allocation information
...
true
Exit from m(io).
:
2> m(io).
Module io compiled: Date: July 10 2013, Time: 10.46
Compiler options: [{outdir,"/build/buildd/erlang-16.b.1-dfsg/lib/stdlib/src/../ebin"},
{i,"/build/buildd/erlang-16.b.1-dfsg/lib/stdlib/src/../include"},
{i,"/build/buildd/erlang-16.b.1-dfsg/lib/stdlib/src/../../kernel/include"},
warnings_as_errors,debug_info]
Object file: /usr/lib/erlang/lib/stdlib-1.19.2/ebin/io.beam
Exports:
columns/1 parse_erl_form/2
columns/0 parse_erl_form/3
format/1 parse_erl_form/4
format/2 printable_range/0
format/3 put_chars/2
...
parse_erl_exprs/4 setopts/2
parse_erl_exprs/3 setopts/1
parse_erl_form/1 write/1
write/2
ok
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Help texts for functions in the standard library are not available for Erlang programs and shell sessions, unlike Python, Lisp, etc.
The way I decided to find the documentation is this Firefox special bookmark for the URL http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/%s.html
. I assigned eas a hotkey to this bookmark so that I can type e io
in Firefox's address bar and redirect to http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/io.html , which has documentation for the functions in the module io
.
Alternatively, you can find http://erldocs.com/ . It allows you to enter the name of the function you are looking for and go directly to its documentation.
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