[Python-Dev] Re: [Patches] selfnanny.py: checking for "self" in every method

[Moshe Zadka]

On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Before we all start writing nannies and checkers, how about a standard
> API design first?  

I thoroughly agree -- we should have a standard API. I tried to write 
selfnanny so it could be callable from any API possible (e.g., it can
take either a file, a string, an ast or a tuple representation)

> I will want to call various nannies from a "Check"
> command that I plan to add to IDLE.  

Very cool: what I imagine is a sort of modular PyLint.

> I already did this with tabnanny,
> and found that it's barely possible -- it's really written to run like
> a script.

Mine definitely isn't: it's designed to run both like a script and like
a module. One outstanding bug: no docos. To be supplied upon request <0.5
wink>. I just wanted to float it out and see if people think that this
particular nanny is worth while.

> Since parsing is expensive, we probably want to share the parse tree.

Yes. Probably as an AST, and transform to tuples/lists inside the
checkers.

> Ideas?

Here's a strawman API:
There's a package called Nanny
Every module in that package should have a function called check_ast.
It's argument is an AST object, and it's output should be a list 
of three-tuples: (line-number, error-message, None) or 
(line-number, error-message, (column-begin, column-end)) (each tuple can
be a different form). 

Problems?
(I'm CCing to python-dev. Please follow up to that discussion to
python-dev only, as I don't believe it belongs in patches)
--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>. 
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html