Patch #1810 by Thomas Lee, reviewed by myself:
allow compiling Python AST objects into code objects
in compile().
diff --git a/Doc/library/functions.rst b/Doc/library/functions.rst
index e966495..b26655e 100644
--- a/Doc/library/functions.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/functions.rst
@@ -190,21 +190,27 @@
.. function:: compile(source, filename, mode[, flags[, dont_inherit]])
- Compile the *source* into a code object. Code objects can be executed by an
- :keyword:`exec` statement or evaluated by a call to :func:`eval`. 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 commonly
- used). The *mode* argument specifies what kind of code must be compiled; it can
- be ``'exec'`` if *source* consists of a sequence of statements, ``'eval'`` if it
- consists of a single expression, or ``'single'`` if it consists of a single
- interactive statement (in the latter case, expression statements that evaluate
- to something else than ``None`` will be printed).
+ 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 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'``.
+ 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'``.
+
+ 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
+ commonly used).
+
+ The *mode* argument specifies what kind of code must be compiled; it can be
+ ``'exec'`` if *source* consists of a sequence of statements, ``'eval'`` if it
+ consists of a single expression, or ``'single'`` if it consists of a single
+ interactive statement (in the latter case, expression statements that
+ evaluate to something else than ``None`` will be printed).
The optional arguments *flags* and *dont_inherit* (which are new in Python 2.2)
control which future statements (see :pep:`236`) affect the compilation of
@@ -224,6 +230,9 @@
This function raises :exc:`SyntaxError` if the compiled source is invalid,
and :exc:`TypeError` if the source contains null bytes.
+ .. versionadded:: 2.6
+ Support for compiling AST objects.
+
.. function:: complex([real[, imag]])