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translate_to_legacy

Single module to translate Python 3 code to Python 2.7. Write all your code in Python 3, and convert it to Python 2.7 at install time.

Purpose

Python 3 was first released in 2008. Initially people mostly wrote code in Python 2, and converted that to Python 3 using 2to3. Later, it became more popular to support both Python versions from a single code base using e.g. six.py. Although this works well, it restricts the developer from writing pretty Python 3 code. The aim of this project is to allow developers to write in Python 3, and support Python 2 using a translation step at build time.

This project is an alternative to lib3to2, but only uses a tokenizer (and not an ast parser), which makes it faster and small enough to fit in one module. This is enough to handle most fixes. Translations for imports are handled differently though, see below. Strings/unicode/bytes are also handled differtently (better IMHO) by this module.

Limitations

For this to work, not all Python 3 functionality can be used. E.g. type annotations, the @ operator, and nonlocal. Further, not all relevant fixers might be implemented yet, because for now I've focussed on what I need. Fixers are easily added though (see below).

General usage

In your setup.py add the following code (or similar):

from translate_to_legacy import LegacyPythonTranslator
shutil.copytree(original_dir, legacy_dir)
LegacyPythonTranslator.translate_dir(legacy_dir, skip=files_to_skip)

For a bit more fine-grained control, here is how the translator class can be used to translate strings from individual files:

from translate_to_legacy import LegacyPythonTranslator
translator = LegacyPythonTranslator(code)
new_code = translator.translate()

To adopt this approach in your project and still allow single-source distribution:

  • add one module to the root of your project.
  • in setup.py invoke the translation at build time.
  • in the root __init__.py add two lines to make legacy Python use the translated code.
  • probably make a few modification to make the translations work correctly.
  • optionally add more translations by subclassing LegacyPythonTranslator.
  • resolve tricky situations like isinstance(x, bytes).

The translator

The translator is the main class that manages the parsing and translation process. The fixes that it applies are implemented as methods that are prefixed with fix_.

The BaseTranslator provides the basic functionality, and the LegacyPythonTranslator implements the fixers specific for the purpose to translate to legacy Python. To add more fixers, simply subclass and add some methods. Existing fixers can be disabled by setting the corresponding class attribute to None.

The BaseTranslator class has the following attributes:

  • translate() - apply the fixers to the tokens and return the result as a string. This should usually be all you need.
  • tokens - the list of found tokens.
  • dump() - get the result as a string (translate() calls this).
  • translate_dir() - classmethod to translate all .py files in the given directory and its subdirectories. Skips files that match names in skip (which can be full file names, absolute paths, and paths relative to dirname). Any file that imports 'print_function' from future is cancelled.

How to write a custom fixer

To implement a custom fixer, create a subclass of the translator class and implement a method prefixed with fix_:

class MyTranslator(LegacyPythonTranslator):
    
    def fix_range(self, token):
        if token.type == 'identifier' and token.text == 'range':
            if token.next_char == '(' and token.prev_char != '.':
                token.fix = 'xrange'
    
    def fix_make_legacy_slow(self, token):
        if token.type == 'keyword' and token.text == 'return':
            indent = token.indentation * ' '
            t = Token(token.total_text, 'custom', token.start, token.start)
            t.fix = '\n%simport time; time.sleep(0.1)\n' % indent
            return t

The code snippet above contains an example to make use of xrange, which is a standard fixer. One can see how the fix is applied by setting the fix attribute. In the second (less serious) fixer, a new token is returned to insert a piece of code.

The tokens

A token is a unit piece of code. This module only generates tokens for constructs of interest, e.g. operators are not present in tokens. Each token specifies its positionin the total text, so that replacements can be easily made, without scrambling the text too much.

The fixers receive one token at a time, and must use it to determine if a fix should be applied. To do this, surrounding tokens and characters can be inspected. To apply a fix, simply set the fix attribute.

The Token class has the following attributes:

  • type - the type of token: 'comment', 'string', 'keyword', 'number' or 'identifier'.
  • total_text - the total text that the token is part of.
  • text - the original text of the token.
  • start - the start position in the total text.
  • end - the end position in the total text.
  • fix - the string to replace this token with.
  • prev_token - the token to the left of this token.
  • next_token - the token to the right of this token.
  • prev_char - the first non-whitespace char to the left of this token that is still on the same line.
  • next_char - the first non-whitespace char to the right of this token that is still on the same line.
  • line_tokens - all (non-comment) tokens that are on the same line.
  • find_forward() - find the position of a character to the right.
  • find_forward() - find the position of a character to the left.

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Single module to translate Python 3 code to Python 2.7

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