Where can I find documentation for calling the various types in Python's types module? [closed]

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While working on some custom serialization, I've been using the types module a lot. One thing that really frustrates me is that the documentation says nothing at all on how to actually call the types. An example: types.CodeType - The type for code objects such as returned by compile(). Yeah sure, what about the 12 arguments it takes??

>>> types.Code开发者_JAVA百科Type()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <fragment>
TypeError: code() takes at least 12 arguments (0 given)

Now, I can generally wrest the information out from various other places in the Python docs, or on the net. For example, I'm guessing new.code(argcount, nlocals, stacksize, flags, codestring, constants, names, varnames, filename, name, firstlineno, lnotab) is the same argument list as expected by types.CodeType (although, an argument list hardly counts as a good documentation).

But seriously, does anyone know documentation that actually describes the possible calls in types?

EDIT: I just noticed one alternative that can be of slight help... help(types.CodeType) etc.

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It's generally not very useful to actually instantiate the types in the types module. Their purpose is to be used in isinstance() calls, and some of them can't be instantiated at all (for example types.GeneratorType).

If it's just curiosity, have a look at the documentation available in the interactive interpreter, for example

help(types.CodeType)

If you really think you need to instanciate these types, I would be curious to hear an example use case :)

Edit: Here is a complete categorised list of the types in the types module for Python 2.5 to 2.7. If multiple types are put on the same line, they are just aliases for the same type.

• 10 types cannot be instantiated at all:

  BuiltinFunctionType, BuiltinMethodType
  DictProxyType
  EllipsisType
  FrameType
  GeneratorType
  GetSetDescriptorType
  MemberDescriptorType
  NoneType
  NotImplementedType
  TracebackType
  

• 16 types are aliases for built-in names:

  BooleanType                 bool
  BufferType                  buffer
  ComplexType                 complex
  DictType, DictionaryType    dict
  FileType                    file
  FloatType                   float
  IntType                     int
  ListType                    list
  LongType                    long
  ObjectType                  object
  SliceType                   slice
  TupleType                   tuple
  TypeType                    type
  StringType                  str
  UnicodeType                 unicode
  XRangeType                  xrange
  

  To instantiate those, it is preferable to use the built-in name.

• The remaining 6 types have useful docstrings:

  ClassType
  CodeType
  FunctionType, LambdaType
  InstanceType
  MethodType, UnboundMethodType
  ModuleType
  

  ClassType and InstanceType can be considered obsolete, since they refer to old-style classes.