Introduction

pyloc is very similar to what python3 -m inspect -d <object> offers. However, it is only focused to retrieve the file name (and eventually the line number) where a given Python object is defined. The object can be a package, module, class, method or function.

pyloc makes some further efforts to figure out the line and column number and its output is formatted so that it can easily be passed to emacsclient or vi.

Examples

You can see the location of Popen.wait method in the sub-process package:

$ python -m pyloc -f human subprocess:Popen.wait
Filename: /Users/polrop/.pyenv/versions/2.7.9/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py
Line: 1379

$ python -m pyloc -f human email.utils:formataddr
Filename: /Users/polrop/.pyenv/versions/2.7.9/lib/python2.7/email/utils.py
Line: 85

(Output may be different on your system if you have different installation path and version)

Note that the object naming syntax is as follow: module[:qualname] Since version 0.2.0, syntax module[.qualname] a la pydoc is also supported.

To open it in Emacs you can do:

$ emacsclient `python -m pyloc -f emacs subprocess:Popen.wait`

or in vim:

$ vim `python -m pyloc -f vi subprocess:Popen.wait`

If you are lazy typing -f <format> all the time and you often use the same format, you can set the default output format this way (you can add this line in your .zshenv or .bashrc):

$ export PYLOC_DEFAULT_FORMAT=emacs

pyloc will always locate object based on the python interpreter your are using:

$ python3 -m pyloc -f human subprocess:Popen.wait
Filename: /Users/polrop/.pyenv/versions/3.4.3/lib/python3.4/subprocess.py
Line: 1526

$ /usr/local/bin/python -m pyloc -f human email.utils:formataddr
Filename: /usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.9/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/email/utils.py
Line: 85

$ /usr/bin/python -m pyloc -f human email.utils:formataddr
Filename: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/email/utils.py
Line: 85

Installation

$ pip install pyloc

$ pip3 install pyloc

$ git clone https://github.com/nicolasdespres/pyloc.git
$ cd pyloc
$ python setup.py develop
# If you also want it for Python 3
$ python3 setup.py develop

$ python setup.py develop --uninstall
# And if you installed the Python 3 version
$ python3 setup.py develop --uninstall

Known bugs

• Classes or built-in types like int or str do not contain location information. In this case pyloc tries to look for the name in the AST. This procedure may not be accurate since Python is a dynamic language.

Hacking

See HACKING for details.

Release notes

See the corresponding tag annotation. After cloning you can do for instance:

$ git show v0.1.10

License

pyloc is released under the term of the Simplified BSD License. Copyright (c) 2015-2106, Nicolas Desprès All rights reserved.

As noted in the source code, some part has been inspired by code from the inspect module written by Ka-Ping Yee <ping@lfw.org> and Yury Selivanov <yselivanov@sprymix.com> form the Python 3.4.3 distribution (see the LICENSE file in the python distribution)