Python A standard module library is attached and described in a separate document Python library reference (hereinafter referred to as "library reference"). Some modules are built into interpreters; they provide access to operations that are not part of the language core but are still built in to improve efficiency or provide access to operating system primitives such as system calls. The collection of these modules is a configuration option, which also depends on the underlying platform. For example, winreg modules are only available on Windows operating systems. A particularly noteworthy module, sys, is embedded in each Python interpreter. Variables sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 define strings used as primary and secondary prompts:

>>> sys.ps1
'>>> '
>>> sys.ps2
'... '
>>> sys.ps1 = 'C> '
C> print('Yuck!')
Yuck!
C>

These two variables are defined only when the compiler is in interactive mode.

The sys.path variable is a list of strings used to determine the module search path of the interpreter. This variable is initialized as the default path obtained from the environment variable PYTHONPATH, or if PYTHONPATH is not set, it is initialized from the built-in default path. You can modify it using standard list operations:

>>> sys.path.append('/ufs/guido/lib/python')

Python built-in function dir()
python built-in function dir() is used to find the name of the module definition. It returns a sorted list of strings:

>>> dir(fibo)
['__name__', 'fib', 'fib2']
>>> dir(sys)  
['__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__', '__loader__', '__name__',
 '__package__', '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__',
 '_clear_type_cache', '_current_frames', '_debugmallocstats', '_getframe',
 '_home', '_mercurial', '_xoptions', 'abiflags', 'api_version', 'argv',
 'base_exec_prefix', 'base_prefix', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder',
 'call_tracing', 'callstats', 'copyright', 'displayhook',
 'dont_write_bytecode', 'exc_info', 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix',
 'executable', 'exit', 'flags', 'float_info', 'float_repr_style',
 'getcheckinterval', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getdlopenflags',
 'getfilesystemencoding', 'getobjects', 'getprofile', 'getrecursionlimit',
 'getrefcount', 'getsizeof', 'getswitchinterval', 'gettotalrefcount',
 'gettrace', 'hash_info', 'hexversion', 'implementation', 'int_info',
 'intern', 'maxsize', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules', 'path',
 'path_hooks', 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'ps1',
 'setcheckinterval', 'setdlopenflags', 'setprofile', 'setrecursionlimit',
 'setswitchinterval', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout',
 'thread_info', 'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions']

If there are no parameters, dir() lists the names you currently define:

>>> import fibo
>>> fib = fibo.fib
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__name__', 'a', 'fib', 'fibo', 'sys']

Note: It lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, and so on.

dir() does not list the names of built-in functions and variables. If you want these, they are defined in the standard module builtins:

>>> dir(builtins)  
['ArithmeticError', 'AssertionError', 'AttributeError', 'BaseException',
 'BlockingIOError', 'BrokenPipeError', 'BufferError', 'BytesWarning',
 'ChildProcessError', 'ConnectionAbortedError', 'ConnectionError',
 'ConnectionRefusedError', 'ConnectionResetError', 'DeprecationWarning',
 'EOFError', 'Ellipsis', 'EnvironmentError', 'Exception', 'False',
 'FileExistsError', 'FileNotFoundError', 'FloatingPointError',
 'FutureWarning', 'GeneratorExit', 'IOError', 'ImportError',
 'ImportWarning', 'IndentationError', 'IndexError', 'InterruptedError',
 'IsADirectoryError', 'KeyError', 'KeyboardInterrupt', 'LookupError',
 'MemoryError', 'NameError', 'None', 'NotADirectoryError', 'NotImplemented',
 'NotImplementedError', 'OSError', 'OverflowError',
 'PendingDeprecationWarning', 'PermissionError', 'ProcessLookupError',
 'ReferenceError', 'ResourceWarning', 'RuntimeError', 'RuntimeWarning',
 'StopIteration', 'SyntaxError', 'SyntaxWarning', 'SystemError',
 'SystemExit', 'TabError', 'TimeoutError', 'True', 'TypeError',
 'UnboundLocalError', 'UnicodeDecodeError', 'UnicodeEncodeError',
 'UnicodeError', 'UnicodeTranslateError', 'UnicodeWarning', 'UserWarning',
 'ValueError', 'Warning', 'ZeroDivisionError', '_', '__build_class__',
 '__debug__', '__doc__', '__import__', '__name__', '__package__', 'abs',
 'all', 'any', 'ascii', 'bin', 'bool', 'bytearray', 'bytes', 'callable',
 'chr', 'classmethod', 'compile', 'complex', 'copyright', 'credits',
 'delattr', 'dict', 'dir', 'divmod', 'enumerate', 'eval', 'exec', 'exit',
 'filter', 'float', 'format', 'frozenset', 'getattr', 'globals', 'hasattr',
 'hash', 'help', 'hex', 'id', 'input', 'int', 'isinstance', 'issubclass',
 'iter', 'len', 'license', 'list', 'locals', 'map', 'max', 'memoryview',
 'min', 'next', 'object', 'oct', 'open', 'ord', 'pow', 'print', 'property',
 'quit', 'range', 'repr', 'reversed', 'round', 'set', 'setattr', 'slice',
 'sorted', 'staticmethod', 'str', 'sum', 'super', 'tuple', 'type', 'vars',
 'zip']
>>>