[parser doesn't give source lines]
The parser module has source lines.
No, it does not (it only returns terminals, as isolated strings). The tokenize module does deliver original source lines in their entirety (as well as terminals, as isolated strings; and column numbers).
Moshe meant line numbers - -it has those.
Why doesn't checkappend.py uses the parser module?
Because it wanted to display the acutal source line containing an offending "append" (which, again, the parse module does not supply). Besides, it was a trivial variation on tabnanny.py, of which I have approximately 300 copies on my disk <wink>.
Of course another argument for making things more OO. (The code used in tabnanny.py to process files and recursively directories fronm sys.argv is replicated a thousand times in various scripts of mine -- Tim took it from my now-defunct takpolice.py. This should be in the std library somehow...)
Grabbing the GregS/BillT enhancement is probably the most practical thing we could build on right now
You got some pointers?
Download python2c (http://www.mudlib.org/~rassilon/p2c/) and grab transformer.py from the zip file. The latter supplies a very useful post-processing pass over the parse module's output, squashing it *way* down.
Those of you who have seen the compiler-sig should know that Jeremy made an improvement which will find its way into p2c. It's currently on display in the Python CVS tree in the nondist branch: see http://www.python.org/pipermail/compiler-sig/2000-February/000011.html and the ensuing thread for more details. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)