Why isn't the parenthesis required when calling dir() on a function that takes parameters?

[h1lo]

print(dir(this_function_is_an_object))

Why does this work, even though my function takes a parameter of num?

[toastedpitabread]

When we define a function, its name has to be referred to directly if we want to talk about the function as an object. The moment we add the () we are invoking the function.

Consider this simple example:

def hello():
    print('hi')

print(hello)
# output: <function hello at 0x7fe5a1947830>

hello()
# output: hi

#or
#let's re-define the function

def hello():
    return "hello"

print(hello)
# output: <function hello at 0x7fe5a1947830>

print(hello())
#output: hello

print("hello")
#output: hello

print( "hello"== hello() )
# True

print( "hello" = hello )
# False

[mtf]

We are not very likely to use the built-in dir() function in a program. It’s more of an inspection tool for use in the interactive shell. We use the function to find the contents of a module. Try it on the math module…

>>> import math
>>> dir(math)

This gives us a list object populated with the attribute names of the module.

['__doc__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__', 'acos', 'acosh', 'asin', 'asinh', 'atan', 'atan2', 'atanh', 'ceil', 'comb', 'copysign', 'cos', 'cosh', 'degrees', 'dist', 'e', 'erf', 'erfc', 'exp', 'expm1', 'fabs', 'factorial', 'floor', 'fmod', 'frexp', 'fsum', 'gamma', 'gcd', 'hypot', 'inf', 'isclose', 'isfinite', 'isinf', 'isnan', 'isqrt', 'ldexp', 'lgamma', 'log', 'log10', 'log1p', 'log2', 'modf', 'nan', 'perm', 'pi', 'pow', 'prod', 'radians', 'remainder', 'sin', 'sinh', 'sqrt', 'tan', 'tanh', 'tau', 'trunc']