Not so fast. If you make this a language feature you force all Python implementations to support an identical AST API. That's a big step.
Not that AST manipulation isn't cool -- but I'd like to warn against over-enthusiasm that might backfire on the language (or its community) as a whole. --Guido On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:34 AM, Mark Shannon <m...@hotpy.org> wrote: > Brett Cannon wrote: >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Eric Snow <ericsnowcurren...@gmail.com >> <mailto:ericsnowcurren...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Brett Cannon <br...@python.org >> <mailto:br...@python.org>> wrote: >> > It would also be very easy to expand importlib.abc.SourceLoader >> to add a >> > method which is called with source and returns the bytecode to be >> written >> > out >> >> Yes, please. Not having to hack around this would be nice. >> >> >> http://bugs.python.org/issue15627 > > > AST transformation is a lot more general than just optimization. > > Adding an AST transformation is a relatively painless way to add to > Python the last element of lisp-ness that it lacks: > Namely being able to treat code as data and transform it at runtime, > after parsing but before execution. > > Some examples: > Profiling code be added by an AST transformation. > IMO this would have been a more elegant way to implement CProfile > and similar profilers than the current approach. > > AST transformations allow DSLs to be implemented in Python > (I don't know if that is a + or - ). > > Access to the AST of a function at runtime would also be of use to > method-based dynamic optimizers, or dynamic de-optimizers for static > compilers. > > All for the price of adding a single method to SourceLoader. > What a bargain :) > > Cheers, > Mark. > > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
