If I want to get help on a method on a built-in class (e.g. list or str) I can use the help function in the interactive shell:

>>> help(str.split)
>>> help(list.append)

However, when I try to do the same with the command-line utility "pydoc" it does not work:

$ pydoc str.split

What does work with the pydoc command is that I use the following command and then search for the function in the resulting output:

$ pydoc str # after that, manually search for "split"

I've created a patch against Python 2.6's "pydoc.py" that tries to iteratively look up methods in builtins. This keeps the previous behavior as-is, but will give positive results in the cases listed above.