[Docstring-develop] AST mining (was Re: Direction of PyChecker)

[David G. <dgo...@bi...>]

From the PyChecker AST discussion, it seems we may have a common goal. For
the Docstring Processing System, I am looking into gleaning information from
the abstract syntax tree. From the working notes, under "Docstring
Extractor":

    We need code that scans a parsed Python module, and returns an
    ordered tree containing the names, docstrings (including
    additional docstrings), and additional info (in parentheses below)
    of all of the following objects:

    - packages
    - modules
    - module attributes (+ values)
    - classes (+ inheritance)
    - class attributes (+ values)
    - instance attributes (+ values)
    - methods (+ formal parameters)
    - functions (+ formal parameters)

    In order to evaluate interpreted text cross-references, namespaces
    for each of the above will also be required.

I'd be very interested in pooling efforts to make this easier. I know almost
nothing about ASTs now, but that could change in a hurry :-).

-- 
David Goodger    dgo...@bi...    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sourceforge.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sourceforge.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net