Currently, the Python parser emits ast.Tuple AST nodes which are compiled to multiple LOAD_xxx instructions followed a final BUILD_TUPLE instruction. The Python peephole optimizer detect LOAD_CONST x n + BUILD_TUPLE instructions to replace it directly with a tuple constant.

IHMO it's better to implement this optimization early at the AST level in an AST optimizer. The PEP-511 proposes to add a new ast.Constant AST node for that.

With this new AST node, the AST optimizer can emit tuple constants, but also any kind of constant like frozenset. For example, it's also possible to optimize "x in {1, 2}" to "x in frozenset({1, 2})" where frozenset({1, 2}) is a constant (don't call frozenset type at runtime). (Again, this optimization is already implemented in the peephole optimizer, it's just an example.)

Attached patch adds the new ast.Constant type but update also code consuming AST to handle this new kind of node:

• add the node: Parser/Python.asdl, Parser/asdl.py, Parser/asdl_c.py
• generated changes: Include/asdl.h, Include/Python-ast.h, Python/Python-ast.c
• accept the node kind: Python/symtable.c, Python/ast.c
• accept Constant instead of Num or Str: Lib/ast.py, Python/future.c, Tools/parser/unparse.py
• emit constants to bytecode: Python/compile.c

I didn't change the compiler to emit directly ast.Constant nodes to reduce the impact on the backward compatibility. This change can be done. An AST optimizer is responsible to convert NameConstant (False, True, None), Num (int, float, complex), Str, Bytes, Tuple to Constant. Example with fatoptimizer:
https://github.com/haypo/fatoptimizer/blob/2d794f511fe23ccde320725c6d12ce5ce8ffbdfe/fatoptimizer/convert_const.py

ast.Constant also simplifies AST optimizers: no need to check each time if a node is constant or not.

Adding a new kind of node was already proposed in the old issue bpo-11549: the patch adds ast.Lit (it was proposed to rename it to ast.Literal).

To support emiting constants from ast.Constant, we will also need the fix for the issue bpo-25843. Currently, the compile merges constants (0, 0) and (0.0, 0.0) because they are equal, but item types are different.

Would it make sense to tag the type of the constant in the node somehow?

We also make no backwards-compatibility guarantees about the AST, so if it simplifies things to switch entirely to Constant from Num, etc. then I said do it.

Brett Cannon: "Would it make sense to tag the type of the constant in the node somehow?"

It's easy to get the type of a constant: type(node.value). I like using isinstance().

Brett Cannon: "We also make no backwards-compatibility guarantees about the AST, so if it simplifies things to switch entirely to Constant from Num, etc. then I said do it."

Oh, I forgot an important point from the PEP: "[ast.Constant] does not contain line number and column offset informations on tuple or frozenset items." I don't know if it's an issue or not.

I prefer to move step by step. As I wrote, we can decide to use directly ast.Constant later, even before the Python 3.6 release.

First I also wanted to add ast.Literal to literals: list, set, dict, etc. But it doesn't work, we loose the item order: set and dict are unordered. An optimizer must not change the order in which items are created. At least, not by default.

I'm talking about an hypothetical ast.Literal type which would take a Python object (list, set, etc.) Current ast.Set contains an ordered list of items, ast.Dict uses two ordered lists for keys and values.

We also make no backwards-compatibility guarantees about the AST, so if it simplifies things to switch entirely to Constant from Num, etc. then I said do it.

Replacing Num/Str/... with Constant causes bug in markerlib (used by pip, it breaks indirectly the venv module of the stdlib) and Chameleon benchmark. I only found these projects by mistake. I'm quite sure that much more code rely on the AST "API" even if it's unstable.

I prefer to not break the API for free :-)

Patch version 2:

• rework the whole patch
• add unit tests
• fix AST validation: the code was completly wrong in patch 1, I don't understand how it worked :-p Validate also correctly nested tuple and nested frozenset.
• add a comment to explain why obj2ast_constant() doesn't have to Py_INCREF() singletons
• handle also Ellipsis
• revert changes on set_context(). It seems like set_context() is only called with code emited directly by the compiler (not by compile(custom_ast_tree, ...)). If someone finds a way to call set_context() with an ast.Constant, we can support this case later.

@serhiy: Would you mind reviewing constant-2.patch? I reviewed my own patch and added some comments, I found a refleak ;-)

New changeset 5de1bd759f3b by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-26146: marshal.loads() now uses the empty frozenset singleton
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5de1bd759f3b

New changeset 5de1bd759f3b by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-26146: marshal.loads() now uses the empty frozenset singleton
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5de1bd759f3b

This change is not directly related to this issue.

It's required by test_singleton_empty_frozenset() of test_set when an AST transformer replaces frozenset(), frozenset([]), etc. calls with an empty frozenset constant.

Patch version 3: fix a reference leak in validate_constant().

New changeset 27e5437f442c by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Add ast.Constant
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/27e5437f442c

I pushed an enhanced version of constant-3.patch:

• fix the compiler: don't emit LOAD_CONST for ast.Constant if the value is a string (str) or a number (int, float, complex), as done previously for ast.Str and ast.Num

• add unit tests on: the compiler (ensure that LOAD_CONST is emitted for constants), ast.get_docstring() and ast.literal_eval()

New changeset c5df914e73ad by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Fix a refleak in validate_constant()
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/c5df914e73ad

New changeset 04444d0d0a05 by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-26146: remove useless code
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/04444d0d0a05

New changeset 58086f0a953a by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-26146: enhance ast.Constant error message
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/58086f0a953a

New changeset 16f60cd918e0 by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
PEP-511
https://hg.python.org/peps/rev/16f60cd918e0