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So far I have found the new Google Code Search a very helpful tool. It offers a regexp based search syntax and the possibility to search for a specific programming language, filename or even license.

If, as I do, you like learning by looking at example code, you know that sometimes finding a piece of code that does what you want to learn is not very easy. Examples in the documentation (if they exist) are usually very basic and seldom are enough to answer the tricky questions that come later on.

Usually, browsing through a piece of real-world working code that does something similar to what I am looking for is enough to put me on the right track, which is where Google Code comes in.

With millions of lines of Python code available for searching, odds are you will find something related to your objective. For instance, earlier today a friend asked me if I had an example for pyinotify, which I have never used. A quick code search yielded this result, which gave him something to work from.

I have also very successfully used the code search to find out how to do something in Zope or Plone. It is a great tool for finding boilerplate code as well, those archetypes schemas and class definitions are prime examples.