Question

is it possible for me to get the line number which variable is defined in a different file.
for example:

file1.py
x = 5
mylist = [ 1, 2, 3]


file2.py

execfile("file1.py")
# TODO
# get line number of 'x' or 'mylist'

I assume each variable is defined only once but just in case what if they defined multiple times?

Thanks

Answer 1

A slightly improved version of Ashwini’s answer, using the ast module and not regular expressions is:

import ast

class GetAssignments(ast.NodeVisitor):
    def visit_Name(self, node):
        if isinstance(node.ctx, ast.Store):
            print node.id, node.lineno

with open('testing.py') as fin:
    module = ast.parse(fin.read())
    GetAssignments().visit(module)

And I think something similar can be used on already compiled objects…