Question

I have a for loop which iterates through a text file (in this case actually a Python file) and it is trying to extract all the functions (looking for the word def). Once it finds that word it starts recording lines until it hits a blank space (which I’m using to denote the end of the function).

My problem is that I want to backup once I hit a def in the file and record any comments that might come before the function. Ex: # This function does the following... etc. I want to backup until I no longer hit a hash.

How would I look backwards with this loop I have written?

for (counter,line) in enumerate(visible_texts):
    line= line.encode('utf-8')
# if line doesn't contain def then ignore it
    if "def" in line and infunction== 0:
        match = re.search(r'\def (\w+)', line.strip())
        line = line.split ("def")[1]    
        print "Recording start of the function..."
        # Backup to see if there's any hashes above it (until the end of the hashes) ** how do I do this **

An example of output I would want at the end would be:

# This function was created by Thomas
# This function print a pass string into the function    
def printme( str ):
       "This prints a passed string into this function"
       print str
       return

Answer 1

Don’t back up; record comments regardless, until you hit another line. If it’s not a def line, discard the comments gathered:

comments = []
for (counter, line) in enumerate(visible_texts):
    if line.lstrip().startswith('#'):
        comments.append(line)
    elif "def" in line and not infunction:
        comment = '\n'.join(comments)
        comments = []
        # rest of your code
    else:
        comments = []