title: Error with string module, python os x
body: <p>I am self-teaching Python from Elkner's How To Think... and have gotten to Chapter 7, strings. I tried to load the string module by typing import string and it seemed to work, however this is what I get:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; import string
  &gt;&gt;&gt; dir (string)
  ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', 'string']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and, confusingly, my help function seems to have died for some related reason:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; help()
  ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', 'string']
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "&lt;stdin&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 458, in __call__
  import pydoc
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 57, in &lt;module&gt;
  from string import expandtabs, find, join, lower, split, strip, rfind, rstrip
  ImportError: cannot import name expandtabs
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What did I do wrong? How can I fix this? Running Mac OS X 10.7.1.</p>