Goal: Learn how to check what's inside a module.

# import 'time' module

# see what functions are defined in the 'time' module
dir(time)
['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'accept2dyear', 
'altzone', 'asctime', 'clock', 'ctime', 'daylight', 
'gmtime', 'localtime', 'mktime', 'sleep', 'strftime', 
'strptime', 'struct_time', 'time', 'timezone', 'tzname', 
'tzset']

# whithout arguments, 'dir()' lists the names: variables, 
# modules and functions you have defined currently
dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 
'readline', 'rlcompleter', 'time']

You can see if there is an internal documentaion by looking at .__doc__

# check the documentation about the ctime() function
print time.ctime.__doc__
ctime(seconds) -> string

Convert a time in seconds since the Epoch to a string in local time.
This is equivalent to asctime(localtime(seconds)). When the time 
tuple is not present, current time as returned by localtime() is used.

# to see the whole documentation on time() module, type
print time.__doc__
This module provides various functions to manipulate time values.
...
 
Variables:

timezone -- difference in seconds between UTC and local standard time
altzone -- difference in  seconds between UTC and local DST time
daylight -- whether local time should reflect DST
tzname -- tuple of (standard time zone name, DST time zone name)

Functions:

time() -- return current time in seconds since the Epoch as a float
clock() -- return CPU time since process start as a float
sleep() -- delay for a number of seconds given as a float
gmtime() -- convert seconds since Epoch to UTC tuple
localtime() -- convert seconds since Epoch to local time tuple
asctime() -- convert time tuple to string
ctime() -- convert time in seconds to string
mktime() -- convert local time tuple to seconds since Epoch
strftime() -- convert time tuple to string according to format specification
strptime() -- parse string to time tuple according to format specification
tzset() -- change the local timezone

# use help(..) to get more info on the module
help(time)
Help on module time:

NAME
    time - This module provides various functions to manipulate time values.

FILE
    /home/mccoy20/utils/cdat/lib/python2.4/lib-dynload/time.so

MODULE DOCS
    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-time.html

DESCRIPTION
    There are two standard representations of time.  One is the number
    of seconds since the Epoch, in UTC (a.k.a. GMT).  It may be an integer
    or a floating point number (to represent fractions of seconds).
    The Epoch is system-defined; on Unix, it is generally January 1st, 1970.
    The actual value can be retrieved by calling gmtime(0).

.....