how to extract source code from code objects ?

[holger krekel]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Michele> decompyle works and it is easy to install and to use. However,
>     Michele> it is not in the standard library and this implies two
>     Michele> disadvantages:
>     Michele> i) it is not universally available;
>     Michele> ii) for any new version of Python I must download a new version
>     Michele> of decompyle. 
> 
>     Michele> I was hoping for a more built-in solution, as for instance an
>     Michele> attribute .co_source in code objects. I guess this would be
>     Michele> inefficient for memory consumption or for other technical
>     Michele> reasons.
> 
> Inefficient, perhaps, but not hugely, I wouldn't think, since code objects
> are relatively rare beasts in the Python object landscape.  The source code
> isn't normally needed, because in most cases it can be looked up in the
> source file (check out the inspect.getsource function).  If you can provide
> a convincing use case why the source for manually compiled code should be
> retained in a feature request on SourceForge, it's possible that someone
> will add a co_source field to code objects.  It would help if you supplied a
> patch that implemented the feature request.  (Note that simply extending
> code objects with a co_source slot won't be enough.  The compiler will have
> to be modified to stuff the code in there.)

Add the ability to *modify* the co_code object and then we could do
live-editing of objects:  interactively modify a function object by 
modifying it's source and recompiling the co_code object.  This would also
help to version control on the object level.  inspect.getsource isn't
that exact especially since you can't use it within the __main__ module. 

i guess modifying the co_code object might get tricky as it currently
is an immutable object.  Or is this easily solved? 

    holger