16.6 Command-line Sage help

If you know only part of the name of a Sage command and want to know where it occurs in Sage, a new option for Sage 0.10.11 has been added to make it easier to hunt it down. Just type sage -grep <string> to find all occurences of <string> in the Sage source code. For example,

was@form:~/s/local/bin$ sage -grep berlekamp_massey
matrix/all.py:from berlekamp_massey import berlekamp_massey
matrix/berlekamp_massey.py:def berlekamp_massey(a):
matrix/matrix.py:import berlekamp_massey
matrix/matrix.py:            g =
berlekamp_massey.berlekamp_massey(cols[i].list())

Type help(foo) or foo?? for help and foo.[tab] for searching of Sage commands. Type help() for Python commands.

For example

help(Matrix)
returns

Help on function Matrix in module sage.matrix.constructor:

Matrix(R, nrows, ncols, entries = 0, sparse = False)
    Create a matrix.

    INPUT:
        R -- ring
        nrows -- int; number of rows
        ncols -- int; number of columns
        entries -- list; entries of the matrix
        sparse -- bool (default: False); whether or not to store matrices as sparse
    OUTPUT:
        a matrix

    EXAMPLES:
        sage: Matrix(RationalField(), 2, 2, [1,2,3,4])
        [1 2]
        [3 4]

        sage: Matrix(FiniteField(5), 2, 3, range(6))
        [0 1 2]
        [3 4 0]

        sage: Matrix(IntegerRing(), 10, 10, range(100)).parent()
        Full MatrixSpace of 10 by 10 dense matrices over Integer Ring

        sage: Matrix(IntegerRing(), 10, 10, range(100), sparse = True).parent()
        Full MatrixSpace of 10 by 10 sparse matrices over Integer Ring
in a new screen. Type q to return to the Sage screen.

See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.