David Foster <davidf...@gmail.com> writes:
> 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.
I'm not sure what you mean by "valid name" and "broken name references".
The usual error is about unbound names, and binding happens at run-time.
Consider this rather contrived example:
def g(a):
if f1(a):
x = a
else:
y = 2*a
return x+1 if f2(a) else y+1
('a' is there only to prevent some obvious optimisations.)
Are there any broken name references here? You might get an
UnboundLocalError, though that depends on what f1 and f2 return.
<snip>
--
Ben.
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