Documentation for the instruction definitions in Python/bytecodes.c
(“the DSL”) is here.
What's currently here:
analyzer.py
: code for converting AST
generated by Parser
to more high-level structure for easier interactionlexer.py
: lexer for C, originally written by Mark Shannonplexer.py
: OO interface on top of lexer.py; main class: PLexer
parsing.py
: Parser for instruction definition DSL; main class: Parser
parser.py
helper for interactions with parsing.py
tierN_generator.py
: a couple of driver scripts to read Python/bytecodes.c
and write Python/generated_cases.c.h
(and several other files)optimizer_generator.py
: reads Python/bytecodes.c
and Python/optimizer_bytecodes.c
and writes Python/optimizer_cases.c.h
stack.py
: code to handle generalized stack effectscwriter.py
: code which understands tokens and how to format C code; main class: CWriter
generators_common.py
: helpers for generatorsopcode_id_generator.py
: generate a list of opcodes and write them to Include/opcode_ids.h
opcode_metadata_generator.py
: reads the instruction definitions and write the metadata to Include/internal/pycore_opcode_metadata.h
py_metadata_generator.py
: reads the instruction definitions and write the metadata to Lib/_opcode_metadata.py
target_generator.py
: generate targets for computed goto dispatch and write them to Python/opcode_targets.h
uop_id_generator.py
: generate a list of uop IDs and write them to Include/internal/pycore_uop_ids.h
uop_metadata_generator.py
: reads the instruction definitions and write the metadata to Include/internal/pycore_uop_metadata.h
Note that there is some dummy C code at the top and bottom of Python/bytecodes.c
to fool text editors like VS Code into believing this is valid C code.
The parser class uses a pretty standard recursive descent scheme, but with unlimited backtracking. The PLexer
class tokenizes the entire input before parsing starts. We do not run the C preprocessor. Each parsing method returns either an AST node (a Node
instance) or None
, or raises SyntaxError
(showing the error in the C source).
Most parsing methods are decorated with @contextual
, which automatically resets the tokenizer input position when None
is returned. Parsing methods may also raise SyntaxError
, which is irrecoverable. When a parsing method returns None
, it is possible that after backtracking a different parsing method returns a valid AST.
Neither the lexer nor the parsers are complete or fully correct. Most known issues are tersely indicated by # TODO:
comments. We plan to fix issues as they become relevant.