It's basically a little project that I created which helps in minifying code. I got over my issues with the AST by simply thinking it through and figuring out exactly which AST nodes needed special treatment (e.g., how to detect an 'elif' clause). Once I did that I was able to work on some of the transforms which is where the fun is.
The code currently doesn't do anything fancy that human beings who like to muck about with minifying/obfuscating Python don't already do:
- Eliminates unneeded whitespace
- Minimal parenthesis usage (mostly)
- Uses hexadecimal numbers when it will save on characters
- Combines imports into a single line that are defined in a row
- Drop unused constants (including docstrings)
- Functions into lambda definitions
As I said, nothing nuts, but at least takes some of the tedium out. The transformations of the syntax are also separated into safe and unsafe transforms. I consider safe transforms things that are semantically equivalent to what was changed in 99% of the cases (i.e., if you muck with execution frames you are on your own). Unsafe transforms will work in 90% of the cases, but are not exactly semantically equivalent (e.g., lambdas are not entirely equivalent to a defined function). Thus users can choose their exposure to transforms which may or may not break their code. You can also skip transforms all together and simply go with the elimination of whitespace and unneeded formatting characters (e.g., parentheses). In the latter case I am able to minify the entire standard library and still get back the exact same AST.
Anyway, this was just a fun little project that I don't plan to take that seriously (i.e., don't expect massive churn on the code any time soon =). If either minification/obfuscation or working with Python's AST interests you, there is a talk on using Python's ast module and another on obfuscating Python code at PyCon you can attend.
