3.18 Standard Module code

The code module defines operations pertaining to Python code objects.

The code module defines the following functions:

compile_command (source, [filename[, symbol]])

This function is useful for programs that want to emulate Python's interpreter main loop (a.k.a. the read-eval-print loop). The tricky part is to determine when the user has entered an incomplete command that can be completed by entering more text (as opposed to a complete command or a syntax error). This function almost always makes the same decision as the real interpreter main loop.

Arguments: source is the source string; filename is the optional filename from which source was read, defaulting to "<input>"; and symbol is the optional grammar start symbol, which should be either "single" (the default) or "eval".

Return a code object (the same as compile(source, filename, symbol)) if the command is complete and valid; return None if the command is incomplete; raise SyntaxError if the command is a syntax error.