1.2.10 Interfacing to the debugger (alias, complete, help, quit, unalias)

1.2.10 Interfacing to the debugger (alias, complete, help, quit, unalias)

alias [name [command]]

Create an alias called name that executes command. The command must not be enclosed in quotes. Replaceable parameters can be indicated by "%1", "%2", and so on, while "%*" is replaced by all the parameters. If no command is given, the current alias for name is shown. If no arguments are given, all aliases are listed.

Aliases may be nested and can contain anything that can be legally typed at the pydb prompt. Note that internal pydb commands can be overridden by aliases. Such a command is then hidden until the alias is removed. Aliasing is recursively applied to the first word of the command line; all other words in the line are left alone.

As an example, here are two useful aliases (especially when placed in the .pydbrc file):

#Print instance variables (usage "pi classInst")
alias pi for k in %1.__dict__.keys(): print "%1.",k,"=",%1.__dict__[k]
#Print instance variables in self
alias ps pi self

complete command-prefix

If readline or one of readline-compatible interfaces such as pyreadline are available on your OS, the complete command will print a list of command names that start with command-prefix.

complete will also work on info, set, and show sub-command.

In addition the command-completion key (usually the tab key) can be used to complete command names, or info, set, and show subcommands.

h(elp) [command [subcommand]]

Without argument, print the list of available commands. With command as argument, print help about that command. "help pydb" displays the full documentation file; if the environment variable PAGER is defined, the file is piped through that command. Since the command argument must be an identifier, "help exec" must be entered to get help on the "!" command.

Some commands, info, set, and show can accept an additional subcommand to give help just about that particular subcommand. For example help info line give help about the info line command.

q(uit)

Quit the debugger. The program being executed is aborted. For now, kill is a synonym for quit.

unalias name

Delete the specified alias.

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