Is there any way to programmatically generate Python bytecode?
abstract-syntax-tree bytecode dsl expression-trees python
Question
I want to hack around with the Python interpreter and try creating a small DSL . Is there any module where I can do something like this theoretical code (similar to LINQ expression trees)?
expression_tree = Function(
Print(
String('Hello world!')
)
)
compile_to_bytecode(expression_tree)
Or would it just be easier to just generate Python source code? Could this be made easier by using C or SWIG or Cython?
Accepted Answer
Working via ast and compiling the tree into bytecode, as another answer suggests, is probably simplest; generating sources and compiling those, almost as good.
However, to explore lower-level approaches, check out the links from this page; I've found byteplay especially useful (currently doesn't work on 2.6 nor 3.*, only 2.4 or 2.5, but I think fixing it for 2.6 should be easy, as currently discussed in its tracker). I have not used Phil Eby's similarly-featured BytecodeAssembler, but given the author's reputation I'm sure it's worth checking it out!
Popular Answer
In Python 2.X, you would typically approach this with the compiler module and its ast sub-module (but note this module is deprecated since version 2.6). In Python 3.X, you would use just ast.
Both offer a compile() function that will go from source/AST to "a code object that can be executed by the exec statement or eval()."