[Python-Dev] Static checker for common Python programming errors (original) (raw)

Stefan Bucur stefan.bucur at gmail.com
Mon Nov 17 15:49:36 CET 2014

I'm developing a Python static analysis tool that flags common programming errors in Python programs. The tool is meant to complement other tools like Pylint (which perform checks at lexical and syntactic level) by going deeper with the code analysis and keeping track of the possible control flow paths in the program (path-sensitive analysis).

For instance, a path-sensitive analysis detects that the following snippet of code would raise an AttributeError exception:

if object is None: # If the True branch is taken, we know the object is None object.doSomething() # ... so this statement would always fail

I'm writing first to the Python developers themselves to ask, in their experience, what common pitfalls in the language & its standard library such a static checker should look for. For instance, here [1] is a list of static checks for the C++ language, as part of the Clang static analyzer project.

My preliminary list of Python checks is quite rudimentary, but maybe could serve as a discussion starter:

Thanks a lot, Stefan Bucur

[1] http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/available_checks.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20141117/6aa7cff3/attachment.html>

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