compiler AST

[Avner Ben]

Hi,

I am working on a reverse-engineering system that relies on comments. I 
have taken a look at the "compile" module in the Python library. Quite 
expectedly, the AST does not contain comment lines. The only exception I 
  have noticed is the very first comment in the source, which is 
interpreted as the module's docstring and is surprisingly also stored in 
the AST as a "discardable"-type node. This leaves me with the dismal 
task of reading the source on my own, parsing the comments and then 
matching them with the AST through the lineno node attribute. Which is a 
waste, because the compiler has been there before me. (For my own 
reasons, I had rather use comments than resort to such esoteric but 
compiler-friendly means as dummy variables etc.)

My question: Is there a way to configure the Python compiler to keep All 
comments from the source as AST nodes (e.g. "discardable")?

	 Avner.