It would seem reasonable that an empty filename would be a legitimate way of indicating that a code object does not have a corresponding source file. However, if one does that then inspect.findsource raises an unexpected IndexError rather than the documented IOError.

This seems due to the fix introduced on issue9284

Python 3.2.3 (default, Jun  8 2012, 05:40:07) 
[GCC 4.6.3 20120306 (Red Hat 4.6.3-2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import inspect
>>> C=compile("print(1)","<string>","single")
>>> D=compile("print(1)","","single")
>>> inspect.findsource(C)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.2/inspect.py", line 547, in findsource
    raise IOError('could not get source code')
IOError: could not get source code
>>> inspect.findsource(D)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.2/inspect.py", line 537, in findsource
    if not sourcefile and file[0] + file[-1] != '<>':
IndexError: string index out of range

It is very likely the code is the same in 3.3 and 3.4, so I'm adding those versions without testing :)

It looks like file is getting set to '' and then indexed on line 553 below, hitting the IndexError before we ever get to IOError.

--550-----------------------
    file = getfile(object)  <-- file = ''
    sourcefile = getsourcefile(object)
    if not sourcefile and file[0] + file[-1] != '<>': <-- ''[0]
        raise IOError('source code not available')
    file = sourcefile if sourcefile else file
--556-----------------------

Confirmed in 3.3

The most straightforward change I can think of is to change the line

    if not sourcefile and file[0] + file[-1] != '<>':

to

    if not sourcefile and (not file or file[0] + file[-1] != '<>'):

That solves the problem in the cases I have observed.

Patch and test to accompany.

New changeset bc73223e4c10 by Ezio Melotti in branch '2.7':
#17526: fix an IndexError raised while passing code without filename to inspect.findsource().  Initial patch by Tyler Doyle.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/bc73223e4c10

New changeset 39e103c1577e by Ezio Melotti in branch '3.3':
#17526: fix an IndexError raised while passing code without filename to inspect.findsource().  Initial patch by Tyler Doyle.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/39e103c1577e

New changeset 8362fbb0ef42 by Ezio Melotti in branch 'default':
#17526: merge with 3.3.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/8362fbb0ef42

Fixed, thanks for the report and the patch!