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classification
Title: Wrong line number attributed to comprehension expressions
Type: behavior Stage: resolved
Components: Interpreter Core Versions: Python 3.6, Python 3.5, Python 2.7
process
Status: closed Resolution: fixed
Dependencies: Superseder:
Assigned To: Nosy List: Greg Price, serhiy.storchaka, vstinner, xtreak
Priority: normal Keywords: patch

Created on 2016-02-28 06:15 by Greg Price, last changed 2022-04-11 14:58 by admin. This issue is now closed.

Files
File name Uploaded Description Edit
lines.diff Greg Price, 2016-02-28 06:15 initial draft patch review
Messages (3)
msg260966 - (view) Author: Greg Price (Greg Price) * Date: 2016-02-28 06:15
In a multi-line list comprehension (or dict or set comprehension), the code for the main expression of the comprehension is wrongly attributed to the *last* line of the comprehension, which might be several lines later.

This makes for quite baffling tracebacks when an exception occurs -- for example this program:
```
def f():
    return [j
            for i in range(3)
            if i]

f()
```
produces (with CPython from current `default`):
```
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "foo.py", line 15, in <module>
    f()
  File "foo.py", line 3, in f
    for i in range(3)
  File "foo.py", line 4, in <listcomp>
    if i]
NameError: name 'j' is not defined
```
showing the line `if i]`, which has nothing to do with the error and gives very little hint as to where the exception is being raised.

Disassembly confirms that the line numbers on the code object are wrong:
```
  2           0 BUILD_LIST               0
              3 LOAD_FAST                0 (.0)
        >>    6 FOR_ITER                18 (to 27)

  3           9 STORE_FAST               1 (i)

  4          12 LOAD_FAST                1 (i)
             15 POP_JUMP_IF_FALSE        6
             18 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (j)
             21 LIST_APPEND              2
             24 JUMP_ABSOLUTE            6
        >>   27 RETURN_VALUE
```
The `LOAD_GLOBAL` instruction for `j` is attributed to line 4, when it should be line 2.

A similar issue affects multi-line function calls, which get attributed to a line in the last argument.  This is less often so seriously confusing because the function called is right there as the next frame down on the stack, but it's much more common and it makes the traceback look a little off -- I've noticed this as a minor annoyance for years, before the more serious comprehension issue got my attention.

Historically, line numbers were constrained to be wrong in these ways because the line-number table `co_lnotab` on a code object required its line numbers to increase monotonically -- and the code for the main expression of a comprehension comes after all the `for` and `if` clauses, so it can't get a line number earlier than theirs.  Victor Stinner's recent work in https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/775b74e0e103 lifted that restriction in the `co_lnotab` data structure, so it's now just a matter of actually entering the correct line numbers there.

I have a draft patch to do this, attached here.  It fixes the issue both for comprehensions and function calls, and includes tests.  Things I'd still like to do before considering the patch ready:
* There are a couple of bits of logic that I knock out that can probably be simplified further.
* While I'm looking at this, there are several other forms of expression and statement that have or probably have similar issues, and I'll want to go and review them too to either fix or determine that they're fine.  The ones I've thought of are included in the draft test file, either as actual tests (with their current answers) or TODO comments for me to investigate.

Comments very welcome on the issue and my draft patch, and meanwhile I'll continue with the further steps mentioned above.

Thanks to Benjamin Peterson for helping diagnose this issue with me when we ran into a confusing traceback that ran through a comprehension.
msg325985 - (view) Author: Karthikeyan Singaravelan (xtreak) * (Python committer) Date: 2018-09-21 12:16
I think there have been some improvements merged with https://bugs.python.org/issue12458 . I am not sure if the patch covers more cases. I ran the tests attached in the patch and some of them cause RuntimeError in master.

# bpo26452.py

def f():
    return [j
            for i in range(3)
            if i]

f()

# Master 

./python.exe
Python 3.8.0a0 (heads/master:c510c6b8b6, Sep 21 2018, 11:10:24)
[Clang 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

./python.exe ../backups/bpo26452.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 6, in <module>
    f()
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 2, in f
    return [j
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 2, in <listcomp>
    return [j
NameError: name 'j' is not defined


# Python 3.7

python3.7 ../backups/bpo26452.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 6, in <module>
    f()
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 3, in f
    for i in range(3)
  File "../backups/bpo26452.py", line 4, in <listcomp>
    if i]
NameError: name 'j' is not defined

# Tests

./python.exe ../backups/test26452.py
..F
======================================================================
FAIL: test_operators (__main__.TestPEP380Operation)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../backups/test26452.py", line 21, in expect_line
    f()
  File "../backups/test26452.py", line 98, in f
    -
RuntimeError

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../backups/test26452.py", line 100, in test_operators
    self.expect_line(f, 3) # want 2
  File "../backups/test26452.py", line 26, in expect_line
    self.assertEqual(relative_line, expected_relative_line)
AssertionError: 2 != 3

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.001s

FAILED (failures=1)


Thanks
msg326260 - (view) Author: Karthikeyan Singaravelan (xtreak) * (Python committer) Date: 2018-09-24 16:00
Thanks much Greg for the details but I am closing this as fixed since there have been some improvements merged with issue12458 along with tests. The original issue reported regarding multi-line comprehension was fixed as I have tested it on https://bugs.python.org/issue26452#msg325985. I tested the patch but unfortunately had runtime errors. Feel free to reopen this if needed or any cases have been missed in the patch that you would like to make a PR.

Thanks :)
History
Date User Action Args
2022-04-11 14:58:28adminsetgithub: 70639
2018-09-24 16:00:31xtreaksetstatus: open -> closed
resolution: fixed
messages: + msg326260

stage: resolved
2018-09-21 12:16:19xtreaksetnosy: + xtreak
messages: + msg325985
2016-03-01 19:47:19SilentGhostsetnosy: + vstinner, serhiy.storchaka

versions: - Python 3.2, Python 3.3, Python 3.4
2016-02-28 06:15:49Greg Pricecreate