Program to backtrack function calls in source code?

[Diez B. Roggisch]

forum at anton.e4ward.com schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> many mistakes in programming arise when one changes the code and
> forgets to adjustment somewhere where it is used. Is there a program
> that can extract all place in the source code where a variable is
> accessed or a function called?
> For example in the simplest case I want to change the name of a
> function everywhere in the source...

Others have given you answers that point to concrete, yet partial 
solutions to your problem.

I just want to shed some light to the broader scope. There are limits to 
what can be done in a dynamic language like python.

Lots of code (and very valuable one) in python lives from the fact that 
e.g.

a = getattr(b, some_computed_name)

works. So, ultimately you will always encounter situations where a 
simple name-replace won't catch all possible access/modification spots.

So, a language like e.g. java together with an ide like eclipse
shines in refactoring.

The fun fact is: having the compiler  grok your code means close to 
nothing - without proper testing, things can and will easily break.

The answer to this is: testing, as automated as possible. And funny 
enough, that should (and will in most cases) catch whatever errors 
resulted from that renaming.

So:  use the mentioned tool, use pycheker and/or pylint to gain some 
pre-running confidence in code changes.

But ultimately: test!

Diez