I'm developing a Python static analysis tool that flags common programming errors in Python programs. The tool is meant to complement other tools like Pylint (which perform checks at lexical and AST level) by going deeper with the code analysis and keeping track of the possible control flow paths in the program (path-sensitive analysis).

For instance, a path-sensitive analysis detects that the following snippet of code would raise an AttributeError exception:

if object is None: # If the True branch is taken, we know the object is None

  object.doSomething() # ... so this statement would always fail

I wanted first to tap into people's experience and get a sense of what common pitfalls in the language & its standard library such a static checker should look for. Just as an example of what I mean, here [1] is a list of static checks for the C++ language, as part of the Clang static analyzer project.

My preliminary list of Python checks is quite rudimentary, but maybe could serve as a discussion starter:

* Proper Unicode handling (for 2.x)

  - encode() is not called on str object

  - decode() is not called on unicode object

* Check for integer division by zero

* Check for None object dereferences

Thanks a lot,

Stefan Bucur

[1] http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/available_checks.html

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