a few compile() and ast doc improvements
diff --git a/Doc/library/ast.rst b/Doc/library/ast.rst
index 2192d11..e1a8ac0 100644
--- a/Doc/library/ast.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/ast.rst
@@ -21,13 +21,12 @@
Python release; this module helps to find out programmatically what the current
grammar looks like.
-An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing :data:`_ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST`
-as a flag to the :func:`compile` builtin function, or using the :func:`parse`
+An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing :data:`ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST` as
+a flag to the :func:`compile` builtin function, or using the :func:`parse`
helper provided in this module. The result will be a tree of objects whose
-classes all inherit from :class:`ast.AST`.
+classes all inherit from :class:`ast.AST`. An abstract syntax tree can be
+compiled into a Python code object using the built-in :func:`compile` function.
-A modified abstract syntax tree can be compiled into a Python code object using
-the built-in :func:`compile` function.
Node classes
------------
@@ -126,7 +125,7 @@
.. function:: parse(expr, filename='<unknown>', mode='exec')
Parse an expression into an AST node. Equivalent to ``compile(expr,
- filename, mode, PyCF_ONLY_AST)``.
+ filename, mode, ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST)``.
.. function:: literal_eval(node_or_string)
diff --git a/Doc/library/functions.rst b/Doc/library/functions.rst
index 78d2ad1..30dca907 100644
--- a/Doc/library/functions.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/functions.rst
@@ -199,15 +199,8 @@
Compile the *source* into a code or AST object. Code objects can be executed
by an :keyword:`exec` statement or evaluated by a call to :func:`eval`.
- *source* can either be a string or an AST object. Refer to the :mod:`_ast`
- module documentation for information on how to compile into and from AST
- objects.
-
- When compiling a string with multi-line statements, two caveats apply: line
- endings must be represented by a single newline character (``'\n'``), and the
- input must be terminated by at least one newline character. If line endings
- are represented by ``'\r\n'``, use the string :meth:`replace` method to
- change them into ``'\n'``.
+ *source* can either be a string or an AST object. Refer to the :mod:`ast`
+ module documentation for information on how to work with AST objects.
The *filename* argument should give the file from which the code was read;
pass some recognizable value if it wasn't read from a file (``'<string>'`` is
@@ -237,6 +230,14 @@
This function raises :exc:`SyntaxError` if the compiled source is invalid,
and :exc:`TypeError` if the source contains null bytes.
+ .. note::
+
+ When compiling a string with multi-line statements, line endings must be
+ represented by a single newline character (``'\n'``), and the input must
+ be terminated by at least one newline character. If line endings are
+ represented by ``'\r\n'``, use :meth:`str.replace` to change them into
+ ``'\n'``.
+
.. versionadded:: 2.6
Support for compiling AST objects.