31.2. Abstract Syntax Trees

New in version 2.5: The low-level _ast module containing only the node classes.

New in version 2.6: The high-level ast module containing all helpers.

The ast module helps Python applications to process trees of the Python abstract syntax grammar. The abstract syntax itself might change with each Python release; this module helps to find out programmatically what the current grammar looks like.

An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST as a flag to the compile() built-in function, or using the parse() helper provided in this module. The result will be a tree of objects whose classes all inherit from ast.AST. An abstract syntax tree can be compiled into a Python code object using the built-in compile() function.

31.2.1. Node classes

class ast.AST

This is the base of all AST node classes. The actual node classes are derived from the Parser/Python.asdl file, which is reproduced below. They are defined in the _ast C module and re-exported in ast.

There is one class defined for each left-hand side symbol in the abstract grammar (for example, ast.stmt or ast.expr). In addition, there is one class defined for each constructor on the right-hand side; these classes inherit from the classes for the left-hand side trees. For example, ast.BinOp inherits from ast.expr. For production rules with alternatives (aka “sums”), the left-hand side class is abstract: only instances of specific constructor nodes are ever created.

_fields

Each concrete class has an attribute _fields which gives the names of all child nodes.

Each instance of a concrete class has one attribute for each child node, of the type as defined in the grammar. For example, ast.BinOp instances have an attribute left of type ast.expr.

If these attributes are marked as optional in the grammar (using a question mark), the value might be None. If the attributes can have zero-or-more values (marked with an asterisk), the values are represented as Python lists. All possible attributes must be present and have valid values when compiling an AST with compile().

lineno

col_offset

Instances of ast.expr and ast.stmt subclasses have lineno and col_offset attributes. The lineno is the line number of source text (1-indexed so the first line is line 1) and the col_offset is the UTF-8 byte offset of the first token that generated the node. The UTF-8 offset is recorded because the parser uses UTF-8 internally.

The constructor of a class ast.T parses its arguments as follows:

• If there are positional arguments, there must be as many as there are items in T._fields; they will be assigned as attributes of these names.
• If there are keyword arguments, they will set the attributes of the same names to the given values.

For example, to create and populate an ast.UnaryOp node, you could use

node = ast.UnaryOp()
node.op = ast.USub()
node.operand = ast.Num()
node.operand.n = 5
node.operand.lineno = 0
node.operand.col_offset = 0
node.lineno = 0
node.col_offset = 0

or the more compact

node = ast.UnaryOp(ast.USub(), ast.Num(5, lineno=0, col_offset=0),
                   lineno=0, col_offset=0)

New in version 2.6: The constructor as explained above was added. In Python 2.5 nodes had to be created by calling the class constructor without arguments and setting the attributes afterwards.

31.2.2. Abstract Grammar

The module defines a string constant __version__ which is the decimal Subversion revision number of the file shown below.

The abstract grammar is currently defined as follows:

-- ASDL's five builtin types are identifier, int, string, object, bool

module Python version "$Revision$"
{
	mod = Module(stmt* body)
	    | Interactive(stmt* body)
	    | Expression(expr body)

	    -- not really an actual node but useful in Jython's typesystem.
	    | Suite(stmt* body)

	stmt = FunctionDef(identifier name, arguments args, 
                            stmt* body, expr* decorator_list)
	      | ClassDef(identifier name, expr* bases, stmt* body, expr *decorator_list)
	      | Return(expr? value)

	      | Delete(expr* targets)
	      | Assign(expr* targets, expr value)
	      | AugAssign(expr target, operator op, expr value)

	      -- not sure if bool is allowed, can always use int
 	      | Print(expr? dest, expr* values, bool nl)

	      -- use 'orelse' because else is a keyword in target languages
	      | For(expr target, expr iter, stmt* body, stmt* orelse)
	      | While(expr test, stmt* body, stmt* orelse)
	      | If(expr test, stmt* body, stmt* orelse)
	      | With(expr context_expr, expr? optional_vars, stmt* body)

	      -- 'type' is a bad name
	      | Raise(expr? type, expr? inst, expr? tback)
	      | TryExcept(stmt* body, excepthandler* handlers, stmt* orelse)
	      | TryFinally(stmt* body, stmt* finalbody)
	      | Assert(expr test, expr? msg)

	      | Import(alias* names)
	      | ImportFrom(identifier module, alias* names, int? level)

	      -- Doesn't capture requirement that locals must be
	      -- defined if globals is
	      -- still supports use as a function!
	      | Exec(expr body, expr? globals, expr? locals)

	      | Global(identifier* names)
	      | Expr(expr value)
	      | Pass | Break | Continue

	      -- XXX Jython will be different
	      -- col_offset is the byte offset in the utf8 string the parser uses
	      attributes (int lineno, int col_offset)

	      -- BoolOp() can use left & right?
	expr = BoolOp(boolop op, expr* values)
	     | BinOp(expr left, operator op, expr right)
	     | UnaryOp(unaryop op, expr operand)
	     | Lambda(arguments args, expr body)
	     | IfExp(expr test, expr body, expr orelse)
	     | Dict(expr* keys, expr* values)
	     | ListComp(expr elt, comprehension* generators)
	     | GeneratorExp(expr elt, comprehension* generators)
	     -- the grammar constrains where yield expressions can occur
	     | Yield(expr? value)
	     -- need sequences for compare to distinguish between
	     -- x < 4 < 3 and (x < 4) < 3
	     | Compare(expr left, cmpop* ops, expr* comparators)
	     | Call(expr func, expr* args, keyword* keywords,
			 expr? starargs, expr? kwargs)
	     | Repr(expr value)
	     | Num(object n) -- a number as a PyObject.
	     | Str(string s) -- need to specify raw, unicode, etc?
	     -- other literals? bools?

	     -- the following expression can appear in assignment context
	     | Attribute(expr value, identifier attr, expr_context ctx)
	     | Subscript(expr value, slice slice, expr_context ctx)
	     | Name(identifier id, expr_context ctx)
	     | List(expr* elts, expr_context ctx) 
	     | Tuple(expr* elts, expr_context ctx)

	      -- col_offset is the byte offset in the utf8 string the parser uses
	      attributes (int lineno, int col_offset)

	expr_context = Load | Store | Del | AugLoad | AugStore | Param

	slice = Ellipsis | Slice(expr? lower, expr? upper, expr? step) 
	      | ExtSlice(slice* dims) 
	      | Index(expr value) 

	boolop = And | Or 

	operator = Add | Sub | Mult | Div | Mod | Pow | LShift 
                 | RShift | BitOr | BitXor | BitAnd | FloorDiv

	unaryop = Invert | Not | UAdd | USub

	cmpop = Eq | NotEq | Lt | LtE | Gt | GtE | Is | IsNot | In | NotIn

	comprehension = (expr target, expr iter, expr* ifs)

	-- not sure what to call the first argument for raise and except
	excepthandler = ExceptHandler(expr? type, expr? name, stmt* body)
	                attributes (int lineno, int col_offset)

	arguments = (expr* args, identifier? vararg, 
		     identifier? kwarg, expr* defaults)

        -- keyword arguments supplied to call
        keyword = (identifier arg, expr value)

        -- import name with optional 'as' alias.
        alias = (identifier name, identifier? asname)
}

31.2.3. ast Helpers

New in version 2.6.

Apart from the node classes, ast module defines these utility functions and classes for traversing abstract syntax trees:

ast.parse(expr, filename='<unknown>', mode='exec')

Parse an expression into an AST node. Equivalent to compile(expr, filename, mode, ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST).

ast.literal_eval(node_or_string)

Safely evaluate an expression node or a string containing a Python expression. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None.

This can be used for safely evaluating strings containing Python expressions from untrusted sources without the need to parse the values oneself.

ast.get_docstring(node, clean=True)

Return the docstring of the given node (which must be a FunctionDef, ClassDef or Module node), or None if it has no docstring. If clean is true, clean up the docstring’s indentation with inspect.cleandoc().

ast.fix_missing_locations(node)

When you compile a node tree with compile(), the compiler expects lineno and col_offset attributes for every node that supports them. This is rather tedious to fill in for generated nodes, so this helper adds these attributes recursively where not already set, by setting them to the values of the parent node. It works recursively starting at node.

ast.increment_lineno(node, n=1)

Increment the line number of each node in the tree starting at node by n. This is useful to “move code” to a different location in a file.

ast.copy_location(new_node, old_node)

Copy source location (lineno and col_offset) from old_node to new_node if possible, and return new_node.

ast.iter_fields(node)

Yield a tuple of (fieldname, value) for each field in node._fields that is present on node.

ast.iter_child_nodes(node)

Yield all direct child nodes of node, that is, all fields that are nodes and all items of fields that are lists of nodes.

ast.walk(node)

Recursively yield all child nodes of node, in no specified order. This is useful if you only want to modify nodes in place and don’t care about the context.

class ast.NodeVisitor

A node visitor base class that walks the abstract syntax tree and calls a visitor function for every node found. This function may return a value which is forwarded by the visit() method.

This class is meant to be subclassed, with the subclass adding visitor methods.

visit(node)

Visit a node. The default implementation calls the method called self.visit_classname where classname is the name of the node class, or generic_visit() if that method doesn’t exist.

generic_visit(node)

This visitor calls visit() on all children of the node.

Note that child nodes of nodes that have a custom visitor method won’t be visited unless the visitor calls generic_visit() or visits them itself.

Don’t use the NodeVisitor if you want to apply changes to nodes during traversal. For this a special visitor exists (NodeTransformer) that allows modifications.

class ast.NodeTransformer

A NodeVisitor subclass that walks the abstract syntax tree and allows modification of nodes.

The NodeTransformer will walk the AST and use the return value of the visitor methods to replace or remove the old node. If the return value of the visitor method is None, the node will be removed from its location, otherwise it is replaced with the return value. The return value may be the original node in which case no replacement takes place.

Here is an example transformer that rewrites all occurrences of name lookups (foo) to data['foo']:

class RewriteName(NodeTransformer):

    def visit_Name(self, node):
        return copy_location(Subscript(
            value=Name(id='data', ctx=Load()),
            slice=Index(value=Str(s=node.id)),
            ctx=node.ctx
        ), node)

Keep in mind that if the node you’re operating on has child nodes you must either transform the child nodes yourself or call the generic_visit() method for the node first.

For nodes that were part of a collection of statements (that applies to all statement nodes), the visitor may also return a list of nodes rather than just a single node.

Usually you use the transformer like this:

node = YourTransformer().visit(node)

ast.dump(node, annotate_fields=True, include_attributes=False)

Return a formatted dump of the tree in node. This is mainly useful for debugging purposes. The returned string will show the names and the values for fields. This makes the code impossible to evaluate, so if evaluation is wanted annotate_fields must be set to False. Attributes such as line numbers and column offsets are not dumped by default. If this is wanted, include_attributes can be set to True.