title: Python documentation equivalent for Perl's "perldoc"
body: <h2>Quick <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~dapm/perl-5.14.4/pod/perldoc.pod" rel="nofollow">perldoc</a> overview:</h2>
  
  <p>When writing a Perl module you can document it with <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html" rel="nofollow"><code>POD</code></a> style documentation.  Then to get an overview of how the module works you can just type this into the command line:</p>
  
  <p><code>perldoc &lt;module_name&gt;</code></p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>How do I do this with Python?</h2>
  
  <p>I understand that Python has a standard form of documenting code using "docstrings" that is somewhat similar to Perl's POD style.  The information about the Python module can then be extracted using the <code>help()</code> function, but this is <em>far from elegant</em>.</p>
  
  <p>First you need to start the Python interpreter, then import the module you want to get help for, and then finally you can use the <code>help()</code> function to get information about the module.</p>
  
  <p><strong>example:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;python
  # Prints Python version info
  &gt;&gt;&gt;import &lt;module_name&gt;
  &gt;&gt;&gt;help(&lt;module_name&gt;)
  # Prints documentation!
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>Is there a better way?</h2>
  
  <p>I would like a Python equivalent to the way this works for Perl:</p>
  
  <p><code>pydoc &lt;module_name&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>but when I try this I get the following output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'pydoc' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
  operable program or batch file.
  </code></pre>