19.1 The basic interface

The top-level of the package defines four functions. If you import compiler, you will get these functions and a collection of modules contained in the package.

parse(

buf)

Returns an abstract syntax tree for the Python source code in buf. The function raises SyntaxError if there is an error in the source code. The return value is a compiler.ast.Module instance that contains the tree.

parseFile(

path)

Return an abstract syntax tree for the Python source code in the file specified by path. It is equivalent to parse(open(path).read()).

walk(

ast, visitor[, verbose])

Do a pre-order walk over the abstract syntax tree ast. Call the appropriate method on the visitor instance for each node encountered.

compile(

source, filename, mode, flags=None, dont_inherit=None)

Compile the string source, a Python module, statement or expression, into a code object that can be executed by the exec statement or eval(). This function is a replacement for the built-in compile() function.

The filename will be used for run-time error messages.

The mode must be 'exec' to compile a module, 'single' to compile a single (interactive) statement, or 'eval' to compile an expression.

The flags and dont_inherit arguments affect future-related statements, but are not supported yet.

compileFile(

source)

Compiles the file source and generates a .pyc file.

The compiler package contains the following modules: ast, consts, future, misc, pyassem, pycodegen, symbols, transformer, and visitor.

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Python Library Reference

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Release 2.4.1, documentation updated on 30 March 2005.