pre-edit stuff persists in a reloaded a module

[Peter Otten]

Friedrich Rentsch wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Python 2.7. I habitually work interactively in an Idle window.
> Occasionally I correct code, reload and find that edits fail to load. I
> understand that reloading is not guaranteed to reload everything, but I
> don't understand the exact mechanism and would appreciate some
> illumination. Right now I am totally bewildered, having deleted and
> garbage collected a module and an object, reloaded the module and remade
> the object and when I inspect the corrected source (inspect.getsource
> (Object.run)) I see the uncorrected source, which isn't even on the disk
> anymore. The command 'reload' correctly displays the name of the source,
> ending '.py', indicating that it recognizes the source being newer than
> the compile ending '.pyc'. After the reload, the pyc-file is newer,
> indicating that it has been recompiled. But the runtime error persist.
> So the recompile must have used the uncorrected old code. I could kill
> python with signal 15, but would prefer a targeted purge that doesn't
> wipe clean my Idle workbench. (I know I should upgrade to version 3. I
> will as soon as I get around to it. Hopefully that will fix the problem.)
> 
> Thanks for comments

(1) stay away from reload()
(2) inspect.getsource() uses a cache that you should be able to clear with 
linecache.clear():

$ echo 'def f(): return "old"' > tmp.py
$ python
[...]
>>> import inspect, tmp
>>> inspect.getsource(tmp.f)
'def f(): return "old"\n'
>>> 
[1]+  Angehalten              python
$ echo 'def f(): return "new"' > tmp.py
$ fg
python
reload(tmp)
reload(tmp)
<module 'tmp' from 'tmp.py'>
>>> inspect.getsource(tmp.f)
'def f(): return "old"\n'
>>> import linecache; linecache.clearcache()
>>> inspect.getsource(tmp.f)
'def f(): return "new"\n'

(3) see 1 ;)