inspect

Inspect modules, classes, functions, methods, frames, and code objects at runtime. Powers tooling such as help(), pydoc, IDEs.

Source-of-record: Lib/inspect.py, inspect docs.

Classification

ismodule, isclass, isfunction, ismethod, isgenerator, isgeneratorfunction, iscoroutine, iscoroutinefunction, isasyncgen, isasyncgenfunction, isawaitable, isframe, iscode, ismethoddescriptor, isdatadescriptor, isgetsetdescriptor, ismemberdescriptor, isbuiltin, isabstract.

Source and documentation

Function	Returns
getsource(object)	Source text.
getsourcelines(object)	(lines, start).
getsourcefile(object)	Source file path.
getfile(object)	Defining file.
getdoc(object)	Cleaned docstring.
getcomments(object)	Adjacent comments.
cleandoc(doc)	Strip indentation.

Signatures

Construct	Purpose
signature(callable, *, follow_wrapped=True, globals=None, locals=None, eval_str=False)	Build.
Signature(parameters=None, *, return_annotation=Signature.empty)	Class.
Parameter(name, kind, *, default, annotation)	Parameter.
BoundArguments	bind, bind_partial, arguments, apply_defaults.

Parameter.kind values: POSITIONAL_ONLY, POSITIONAL_OR_KEYWORD, VAR_POSITIONAL, KEYWORD_ONLY, VAR_KEYWORD.

Frames and stack

currentframe(), stack(), trace(), getouterframes(frame), getinnerframes(traceback), getframeinfo(frame, context=1), getargvalues(frame), formatargvalues. FrameInfo dataclass exposes frame, filename, lineno, function, code_context, index, positions (3.11+).

Class introspection

getmro(cls), getmembers(object, predicate=None), classify_class_attrs(cls), getattr_static(obj, attr, default), get_annotations(obj, *, globals=None, locals=None, eval_str=False) (3.10+).

Gopy status

Area	State
Classification predicates	Complete.
signature, Signature, Parameter	Complete.
getsource / getsourcelines	Complete; requires loader linecache.
Frame helpers and FrameInfo.positions	Complete.

Reference

• CPython 3.14: inspect.
• Lib/inspect.py.
• module/inspect/. gopy port.
• PEPs 362, 657.