Why is the use of an undefined name not a syntax error?
Terry Reedy
tjreedy at udel.edu
Mon Apr 2 00:08:59 EDT 2018
On 4/1/2018 5:24 PM, David Foster wrote:
> My understanding is that the Python interpreter already has enough information when bytecode-compiling a .py file to determine which names correspond to local variables in functions. That suggests it has enough information to identify all valid names in a .py file and in particular to identify which names are not valid.
>
> If broken name references were detected at compile time, it would eliminate a huge class of errors before running the program: missing imports, call of misspelled top-level function, reference to misspelled local variable.
>
> Of course running a full typechecker like mypy would eliminate more errors like misspelled method calls, type mismatch errors, etc. But if it is cheap to detect a wide variety of name errors at compile time, is there any particular reason it is not done?
>
> - David
>
> P.S. Here are some uncommon language features that interfere with identifying all valid names. In their absence, one might expect an invalid name to be a syntax error:
>
> * import *
> * manipulating locals() or globals()
> * manipulating a frame object
> * eval
The CPython parser and compiler are autogenerated from an LL(1)
context-free grammer and other files. Context-dependent rules like the
above are for linters and other whole-program analyses. A linter that
makes occasional mistakes in its warning can still be useful. A
compiler should be perfect.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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