On 8/13/2012 10:45 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
Not so fast. If you make this a language feature you force all Python
implementations to support an identical AST API. That's a big step.

I have been wondering about this. One could think from the manuals that we are there already. From the beginning of the ast chapter:

"The ast module helps Python applications to process trees of *the* Python abstract syntax grammar.  ... An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST as a flag to the compile() built-in function" (emphasis on *the* added).
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On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> wrote:

On 8/13/2012 10:45 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
Not so fast. If you make this a language feature you force all Python
implementations to support an identical AST API. That's a big step.

I have been wondering about this. One could think from the manuals that we are there already. From the beginning of the ast chapter:

"The ast module helps Python applications to process trees of \*the\* Python abstract syntax grammar. ... An abstract syntax tree can be generated by passing ast.PyCF\_ONLY\_AST as a flag to the compile() built-in function" (emphasis on \*the\* added).

and the entry for compile(): "Compile the source into a code or AST object."

I see nothing about ast possibly being CPython only. Should there be?

Time to ask the other VMs what they are currently doing (the ast module came into existence in Python 2.6 so all the VMs should be answer the question since Jython is in alpha for 2.7 compatibility).