mirror of https://github.com/python/cpython
58 lines
2.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
58 lines
2.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
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.. _ast:
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Abstract Syntax Trees
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=====================
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.. module:: _ast
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:synopsis: Abstract Syntax Tree classes.
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.. sectionauthor:: Martin v. Löwis <martin@v.loewis.de>
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The ``_ast`` module helps Python applications to process trees of the Python
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abstract syntax grammar. The Python compiler currently provides read-only access
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to such trees, meaning that applications can only create a tree for a given
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piece of Python source code; generating byte code from a (potentially modified)
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tree is not supported. The abstract syntax itself might change with each Python
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release; this module helps to find out programmatically what the current grammar
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looks like.
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An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing ``_ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST`` as a
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flag to the :func:`compile` builtin function. The result will be a tree of
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objects whose classes all inherit from ``_ast.AST``.
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The actual classes are derived from the ``Parser/Python.asdl`` file, which is
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reproduced below. There is one class defined for each left-hand side symbol in
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the abstract grammar (for example, ``_ast.stmt`` or ``_ast.expr``). In addition,
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there is one class defined for each constructor on the right-hand side; these
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classes inherit from the classes for the left-hand side trees. For example,
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``_ast.BinOp`` inherits from ``_ast.expr``. For production rules with
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alternatives (aka "sums"), the left-hand side class is abstract: only instances
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of specific constructor nodes are ever created.
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Each concrete class has an attribute ``_fields`` which gives the names of all
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child nodes.
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Each instance of a concrete class has one attribute for each child node, of the
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type as defined in the grammar. For example, ``_ast.BinOp`` instances have an
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attribute ``left`` of type ``_ast.expr``. Instances of ``_ast.expr`` and
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``_ast.stmt`` subclasses also have lineno and col_offset attributes. The lineno
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is the line number of source text (1 indexed so the first line is line 1) and
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the col_offset is the utf8 byte offset of the first token that generated the
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node. The utf8 offset is recorded because the parser uses utf8 internally.
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If these attributes are marked as optional in the grammar (using a question
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mark), the value might be ``None``. If the attributes can have zero-or-more
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values (marked with an asterisk), the values are represented as Python lists.
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Abstract Grammar
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----------------
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The module defines a string constant ``__version__`` which is the decimal
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subversion revision number of the file shown below.
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The abstract grammar is currently defined as follows:
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.. literalinclude:: ../../Parser/Python.asdl
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