marked-up Python code

[Luc Goossens]

Hi,

I would like to experiment with marked-up Python source code. A more
elaborate explanation of the use-case is at the end of this mail. The
short story is that I would like to do things like assign colors to
pieces of text in my editor and have this information saved _in my
source code_
smth like
<red>
else :
print "ERROR"
return -1
</red>

"all" the Python parser has to do is skip the mark-up.

Has something like this been done before? Is there a way to do this
without changing the Python executable? If not, where in the source
code should I start looking?

cheers,
Luc

PS1
I know I can put the mark-up after a # and the problem is solved
trivially, but this will not work for all cases (e.g. mark-up of
single identifiers) and to be honest I was thinking of recycling some
mark-up capable editor and an existing mark-up language

PS2
here's the real use case
I have a small application in Python. The code shares a recurring
feature: within methods 20% of the code lines is about the actual
handling of the correct case, 40% is about the handling of the
incorrect cases, 40% is instrumenting (logging and timing).
A case for aspect oriented programming? I would certainly think so,
but unfortunately there is no obvious way to map this to the
prevailing aspect-advice-joint point-point cut model. Moreover, I
really do not want this code to become fragmented over multiple
source code files, I just want the aspects to be readily visible in
my editor, and be able to selectively show/hide some of them (like
expanding/collapsing code blocks).

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Hi,

I would like to experiment with marked-up Python source code. A more
elaborate explanation of the use-case is at the end of this mail. The
short story is that I would like to do things like assign colors to
pieces of text in my editor and have this information saved _in my
source code_
smth like
<red>
else :
print "ERROR"
return -1
</red>

"all" the Python parser has to do is skip the mark-up.

Has something like this been done before? Is there a way to do this
without changing the Python executable? If not, where in the source
code should I start looking?

cheers,
Luc

PS1
I know I can put the mark-up after a # and the problem is solved
trivially, but this will not work for all cases (e.g. mark-up of
single identifiers) and to be honest I was thinking of recycling some
mark-up capable editor and an existing mark-up language

PS2
here's the real use case
I have a small application in Python. The code shares a recurring
feature: within methods 20% of the code lines is about the actual
handling of the correct case, 40% is about the handling of the
incorrect cases, 40% is instrumenting (logging and timing).
A case for aspect oriented programming? I would certainly think so,
but unfortunately there is no obvious way to map this to the
prevailing aspect-advice-joint point-point cut model. Moreover, I
really do not want this code to become fragmented over multiple
source code files, I just want the aspects to be readily visible in
my editor, and be able to selectively show/hide some of them (like
expanding/collapsing code blocks).

I'd do it like this:

if config.logging:
<logging-related code>
if config.correct_case:
<correct case code

Then alter your config. Your approach will make you fight on two fronts:
python pre-processing to strip out code, working against the dynamicity of
the language and making you dependand on the preprocessor being available
under all circumstances (think of checking out the code on a remote
machine), and of course teaching the editor new tricks.

instead using one standardized idiom as above might be sufficient to teach
an editor for convenience whilst keeping the source actual source.

Diez