Logging global assignments

[Larry Bates]

Jacek Generowicz wrote:
> I am dealing with an application which reads in configurations by
> calling (a wrapper around) execfile. Any configuration file may itself
> execfile other configuration files in the same manner.
> 
> I would like to create a log containing all global assignments made in
> these files. Comparing the globals dictionaries before and after is
> not quite enough, as 
> 
> a) this misses multiple assignments to the same name, within a single
>    file,
> 
> b) doesn't allow me to pinpoint the line at which the assignment is
>    made.
> 
> Inspecting the implementation of execfile suggests to me that the
> assignments are performed by a hard-wired call to PyDict_SetItem, in
> the opcode implementations, so it looks like ideas based on giving
> execfile a globals dictionary with an instrumented __setitem__ are
> probably doomed to failure.
> 
> Is there any way of injecting some of my code into the process of
> global name binding, or some other means of "capturing" global
> assignments ?

Suggestion:
Use ConfigParser to set your globals instead and you can track
your assignments over each file, section and option in the file.

Larry Bates