On Feb 22, 2008, at 7:28 AM, Jean-Didier Maréchal wrote:

Hi again,

When using the python shell, I am often struggling to find the
attribute for the atoms I work on.
for at my list with the selected atoms, I caught that at[i].name gives
the atom name of the entry at[i], at[i].residue provides with the name
residue.chain, etc.

Where can I find in the programmer's guide the full list of available
attributes? What would be the way to ask for the serialNumber from the
IDLE?

Thanks lot
JD

Hi JD,

dir(a) will list the attributes of 'a'. help(a) will produce documentation for the attributes of 'a' that come from the C++ layer (but not ones that were added in the Python layer). 'a' could be a class rather than an instance. For example, help(chimera.Atom) lists the methods/attributes of Atom and provides some info about them.

We do what we can to keep the programmer's guide up to date, but for attributes (since they get added/changed pretty frequently) it is better to query with help()/dir() than to fall back on the relatively static programmer's guide documentation.

--Eric

Eric Pettersen

UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu