# General Utilities

## General Utilities

This page lists all of Transformers general utility functions that are found in the file `utils.py`.

Most of those are only useful if you are studying the general code in the library.

### Enums and namedtuples

#### class transformers.utils.ExplicitEnum

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/generic.py#L426)

( valuenames = Nonemodule = Nonequalname = Nonetype = Nonestart = 1 )

Enum with more explicit error message for missing values.

#### class transformers.utils.PaddingStrategy

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/generic.py#L438)

( valuenames = Nonemodule = Nonequalname = Nonetype = Nonestart = 1 )

Possible values for the `padding` argument in [PreTrainedTokenizerBase.**call**()](https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/v4.34.1/en/model_doc/vits#transformers.VitsTokenizer.__call__). Useful for tab-completion in an IDE.

#### class transformers.TensorType

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/generic.py#L449)

( valuenames = Nonemodule = Nonequalname = Nonetype = Nonestart = 1 )

Possible values for the `return_tensors` argument in [PreTrainedTokenizerBase.**call**()](https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/v4.34.1/en/model_doc/vits#transformers.VitsTokenizer.__call__). Useful for tab-completion in an IDE.

### Special Decorators

**transformers.add\_start\_docstrings**

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/doc.py#L23)

( \*docstr )

**transformers.utils.add\_start\_docstrings\_to\_model\_forward**

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/doc.py#L31)

( \*docstr )

**transformers.add\_end\_docstrings**

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/doc.py#L53)

( \*docstr )

**transformers.utils.add\_code\_sample\_docstrings**

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/doc.py#L1064)

( \*docstrprocessor\_class = Nonecheckpoint = Noneoutput\_type = Noneconfig\_class = Nonemask = '\[MASK]'qa\_target\_start\_index = 14qa\_target\_end\_index = 15model\_cls = Nonemodality = Noneexpected\_output = Noneexpected\_loss = Nonereal\_checkpoint = None )

**transformers.utils.replace\_return\_docstrings**

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/doc.py#L1152)

( output\_type = Noneconfig\_class = None )

### Special Properties

#### class transformers.utils.cached\_property

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/generic.py#L36)

( fget = Nonefset = Nonefdel = Nonedoc = None )

Descriptor that mimics @property but caches output in member variable.

From tensorflow\_datasets

Built-in in functools from Python 3.8.

### Other Utilities

#### class transformers.utils.\_LazyModule

[\<source>](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/v4.34.1/src/transformers/utils/import_utils.py#L1233)

( namemodule\_fileimport\_structuremodule\_spec = Noneextra\_objects = None )

Module class that surfaces all objects but only performs associated imports when the objects are requested.