2010/12/24 Raymond Hettinger <report@bugs.python.org>:
>
> Raymond Hettinger <rhettinger@users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:
>
> ISTM the whole point of an Abstract Syntax Tree is to express semantics while throwing away the syntax details.  The only reason any position information is kept is to support tracebacks and debugging.

I agree for the most part. It's also nearly impossible to preserve all
the detail one would want in an *abstract* syntax tree.

>
> Perhaps the OP's request should changed to "add function to concrete parse trees to show structure while preserving all the input detail returned by tokenize."

If someone can comment on what that would look like...