The ast.walk()
function walks the tree breath-first; see the ast.py
source:
def walk(node):
"""
Recursively yield all descendant nodes in the tree starting at *node*
(including *node* itself), in no specified order. This is useful if you
only want to modify nodes in place and don't care about the context.
"""
from collections import deque
todo = deque([node])
while todo:
node = todo.popleft()
todo.extend(iter_child_nodes(node))
yield node
New nodes are pushed into a queue, the next node being traversed is the front of the queue.
If you wanted a depth-first traversal, use a subclass of ast.NodeVisitor()
instead; it will walk the tree using recursion; NodeVisitor.visit()
calls NodeVisitor.generic_visit()
unless a more node-specific visitor method is defined, and NodeVisitor.generic_visit()
calls NodeVisitor.visit()
again for child nodes:
class NodeVisitor(object):
"""
A node visitor base class that walks the abstract syntax tree and calls a
visitor function for every node found. This function may return a value
which is forwarded by the `visit` method.
This class is meant to be subclassed, with the subclass adding visitor
methods.
Per default the visitor functions for the nodes are ``'visit_'`` +
class name of the node. So a `TryFinally` node visit function would
be `visit_TryFinally`. This behavior can be changed by overriding
the `visit` method. If no visitor function exists for a node
(return value `None`) the `generic_visit` visitor is used instead.
Don't use the `NodeVisitor` if you want to apply changes to nodes during
traversing. For this a special visitor exists (`NodeTransformer`) that
allows modifications.
"""
def visit(self, node):
"""Visit a node."""
method = 'visit_' + node.__class__.__name__
visitor = getattr(self, method, self.generic_visit)
return visitor(node)
def generic_visit(self, node):
"""Called if no explicit visitor function exists for a node."""
for field, value in iter_fields(node):
if isinstance(value, list):
for item in value:
if isinstance(item, AST):
self.visit(item)
elif isinstance(value, AST):
self.visit(value)
If you do subclass NodeVisitor
(or it's derived version, NodeTransformer
), do remember to also call super(YourClass, self).generic_visit(node)
in your specific visit_*
methods to continue to traverse the tree.