Python Interview Questions and Answers

How do I tell "incomplete input" from "invalid input"?
Sometimes you want to emulate the Python interactive interpreter's behavior, where it gives you a continuation prompt when the input is incomplete (e.g. you typed the start of an "if" statement or you didn't close your parentheses or triple string quotes), but it gives you a syntax error message immediately when the input is invalid.

In Python you can use the codeop module, which approximates the parser's behavior sufficiently. IDLE uses this, for example.

The easiest way to do it in C is to call PyRun_InteractiveLoop() (perhaps in a separate thread) and let the Python interpreter handle the input for you. You can also set the PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer to point at your custom input function. See Modules/readline.c and Parser/myreadline.c for more hints.

However sometimes you have to run the embedded Python interpreter in the same thread as your rest application and you can't allow the PyRun_InteractiveLoop() to stop while waiting for user input. The one solution then is to call PyParser_ParseString() and test for e.error equal to E_EOF, which means the input is incomplete). Here's a sample code fragment, untested, inspired by code from Alex Farber:
#include <Python.h>
#include <node.h>
#include <errcode.h>
#include <grammar.h>
#include <parsetok.h>
#include <compile.h>

int testcomplete(char *code)
/* code should end in \n */
/* return -1 for error, 0 for incomplete,
1 for complete */
{
node *n;
perrdetail e;

n = PyParser_ParseString(code, &_PyParser_Grammar,
Py_file_input, &e);
if (n == NULL) {
if (e.error == E_EOF)
return 0;
return -1;
}

PyNode_Free(n);
return 1;
}

Another solution is trying to compile the received string with Py_CompileString(). If it compiles without errors, try to execute the returned code object by calling PyEval_EvalCode(). Otherwise save the input for later. If the compilation fails, find out if it's an error or just more input is required - by extracting the message string from the exception tuple and comparing it to the string "unexpected EOF while parsing". Here is a complete example using the GNU readline library (you may want to ignore SIGINT while calling readline()):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <readline.h>

#include <Python.h>
#include <object.h>
#include <compile.h>
#include <eval.h>

int main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
int i, j, done = 0; /* lengths of line, code */
char ps1[] = ">>> ";
char ps2[] = "... ";
char *prompt = ps1;
char *msg, *line, *code = NULL;
PyObject *src, *glb, *loc;
PyObject *exc, *val, *trb, *obj, *dum;

Py_Initialize ();
loc = PyDict_New ();
glb = PyDict_New ();
PyDict_SetItemString (glb, "__builtins__",
PyEval_GetBuiltins ());

while (!done)
{
line = readline (prompt);

if (NULL == line) /* CTRL-D pressed */
{
done = 1;
}
else
{
i = strlen (line);

if (i > 0)
add_history (line);
/* save non-empty lines */

if (NULL == code)
/* nothing in code yet */
j = 0;
else
j = strlen (code);

code = realloc (code, i + j + 2);
if (NULL == code)
/* out of memory */
exit (1);

if (0 == j)
/* code was empty, so */
code[0] = '\0';
/* keep strncat happy */

strncat (code, line, i);
/* append line to code */
code[i + j] = '\n';
/* append '\n' to code */
code[i + j + 1] = '\0';

src = Py_CompileString (code, " <stdin>", Py_single_input);

if (NULL != src)
/* compiled just fine - */
{
if (ps1 == prompt ||
/* ">>> " or */
'\n' == code[i + j - 1])
/* "... " and double '\n' */
{
/* so execute it */
dum = PyEval_EvalCode ((PyCodeObject *)src, glb, loc);
Py_XDECREF (dum);
Py_XDECREF (src);
free (code);
code = NULL;
if (PyErr_Occurred ())
PyErr_Print ();
prompt = ps1;
}
}
/* syntax error or E_EOF? */

else if (PyErr_ExceptionMatches (PyExc_SyntaxError))
{
PyErr_Fetch (&exc, &val, &trb);
/* clears exception! */

if (PyArg_ParseTuple (val, "sO", &msg, &obj) &&
!strcmp (msg, "unexpected EOF while parsing")) /* E_EOF */
{
Py_XDECREF (exc);
Py_XDECREF (val);
Py_XDECREF (trb);
prompt = ps2;
}
else
/* some other syntax error */
{
PyErr_Restore (exc, val, trb);
PyErr_Print ();
free (code);
code = NULL;
prompt = ps1;
}
}
else
/* some non-syntax error */
{
PyErr_Print ();
free (code);
code = NULL;
prompt = ps1;
}

free (line);
}
}

Py_XDECREF(glb);
Py_XDECREF(loc);
Py_Finalize();
exit(0);
}

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