TITLE: Saving and sharing debug code PROBLEM: Sometimes debug-only code should be saved and shared. For example, one person's code written to solve a bug might be needed a second time, by someone else. Or perhaps the same person, again. This is particularly likely when the bug is difficult or stubborn. POSSIBLE SOLUTION At present, __debug__ is a keyword identifier, which can take only the values True and False. It gets its value on Python startup, and then its value can't be changed. The possible solution is to allow Python startup to give __debug__ an additional value, namely 2. Once this is done, code blocks such as if __debug__ >= 2: # my debug-only code goes here will effectively be ignored, except when requested. Python already does this for blocks such as if __debug__: # ignored if optimised code is being generated See also: https://docs.python.org/3/library/constants.html#__debug__ __debug__ This constant is true if Python was not started with an -O option. See also the assert statement.