Tracing Python expression evaluation step by step

Question

I\'m trying to write Python expression evaluation visualizer, that will show how Python expressions are evaluated step by step (for education purposes). Philip Guo\'s Python

Answer 1

Why not use the dis module?

Since CPython compiles Python to bytecode and runs that, looking at the bytecode gives you the best idea of what actually happens.

In [1]: import dis

In [2]: dis.dis('sorted([4, 2, 3, 1] + [5, 6])[1] == 2')
  1           0 LOAD_NAME                0 (sorted)
              3 LOAD_CONST               0 (4)
              6 LOAD_CONST               1 (2)
              9 LOAD_CONST               2 (3)
             12 LOAD_CONST               3 (1)
             15 BUILD_LIST               4
             18 LOAD_CONST               4 (5)
             21 LOAD_CONST               5 (6)
             24 BUILD_LIST               2
             27 BINARY_ADD
             28 CALL_FUNCTION            1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
             31 LOAD_CONST               3 (1)
             34 BINARY_SUBSCR
             35 LOAD_CONST               1 (2)
             38 COMPARE_OP               2 (==)
             41 RETURN_VALUE

Edit: An alternative method could be to show the steps one-by-one in IPython:

In [1]: [4, 2, 3, 1]
Out[1]: [4, 2, 3, 1]

In [2]: [4, 2, 3, 1] + [5, 6]
Out[2]: [4, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6]

In [3]: sorted([4, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6])
Out[3]: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

In [4]: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6][1]
Out[4]: 2

In [5]: 2 == 2
Out[5]: True