Programmatically editing Python source

Question

This is something that I think would be very useful. Basically, I'd like there to be a way to edit Python source programmatically without requiring human intervention. There are a couple of things I would like to do with this:

1. Edit the configuration of Python apps that use source modules for configuration.

2. Set up a "template" so that I can customize a Python source file on the fly. This way, I can set up a "project" system on an open source app I'm working on and allow certain files to be customized.

I could probably write something that can do this myself, but I can see that opening up a lot of "devil's in the details" type issues. Are there any ways to do this currently, or am I just going to have to bite the bullet and implement it myself?

Answer 1

Python's standard library provides pretty good facilities for working with Python source; note the tokenize and parser modules.