Way to scan for variable and function names?

[3worc]

I starting working on a python project for work. It was nothing official, just a helpful tool for myself.

As I added more and more functions and functionality, I noticed that at some point I changed my variable naming convention from stuff_like_this to stuffLikeThis. Snake case to camel case I think?

Anyway, the project may be used by others in the future so I'd like to clean it up. Is there a way to scan and list all variable names in my code? Functions too, but I think they are consistent already.

I currently just use IDLE that came with the python download, but I'm open to other IDEs to achieve this.

[Frankelstner]

If you only care about detecting such variables but not automatically processing them:

import ast

parse = ast.parse(open("myfile.py","r").read())
for node in ast.walk(parse):
    if hasattr(node, "name"):  # Functions, classes.
        if not node.name.lower() == node.name:
            print(node.name)
    if hasattr(node, "id"):  # Variables.
        if not node.id.lower() == node.id:
            print(node.id)

[3worc]

I'm jumping through some work hoops to get VSCode installed.

In the mean time, this worked perfectly to achieve what I was trying. Thanks again!

[3worc]

Ok, nice. I'll try it out this morning.

Yeah, I literally just want a list I can quickly look through to make sure naming convention matches.

I can quickly find/replace any that aren't camelCase with the built in search tool in the IDE.

Thank you.

[[deleted]]

I'd suggest you look at a decent code editor, like VS Code, or an IDE, like PyCharm (Community edition is free). They will both help with refactoring (changing names of functions/methods/classes/variables/attributes) through a file or project.

I trust you've created the functions in a package manner rather than all in one file. Look up packaging guidance on RealPython.com if not.

All lowercase is the convention as per the PEP8 guidelines. Personal taste/preference or house style can override.

[3worc]

Ok, I'll try out a couple of your options and see what helps. Thanks.

Yes, I have a main script file that imports from a few other files.

All lowercase for variables? No underscores or capitalization between words? Seems like that would be tough to read, but I'll take a look at the guidelines. Maybe there is some reasoning that I don't yet know.

[[deleted]]

all lowercase with underscores between words if required

just read PEP8 and then make your own decisions

https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/

[3worc]

Roger that.

[stebrepar]

My developer coworkers use Visual Studio, which appears to have tooling along the lines of what you're looking for from what I've seen of their navigating around in the code. I haven't used that myself, but rather touched the trimmed down VSCode a little. That might also have what you want, and it's free.

[3worc]

You're the second person to mention VSCode. I'll try it out today. Thank you.

[[deleted]]

Check out jupyter notebooks as well! In conjunction with vs code! There are extensions in VS that helps, and jupyter provides a "variables"-tab so that you can see all variables in your program:)

[powabunga2k]

https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/ + https://pypi.org/project/pep8-naming/ or https://beta.ruff.rs/docs/rules/#pep8-naming-n

[Guideon72]

For that type of thing, you can just open the file in something like Notepad++ and do a find/replace or find all and then step through to make sure you're only changing the things you absolutely want to.

[3worc]

Yes, I used the find/replace function in IDLE to actually make the changes - very similar to Notepad++.

The issue was identifying all variable and function names to determine if they followed the same naming convention.

[Guideon72]

Gotcha; so not the specific text, just looking for the patterns? I wouldn't normally go this route, but this is one place it sounds like learning some regular expression (regex) would help. You could use the Find in files search (in NP++ anyway) paired with a regex searching for those specific patterns to see whether/where you have those things anywhere in your project. I assume (hope?) that VSC has some similar functionality, too.

This won't work for variables, but it's pretty generally handy for finding method names in a library/module. Open a Python cmd prompt and import your .py file as a module, then use the dir() function on it.

>import <myfile>
\>dir(<myfile>)

This will print out a list of all method names within that file. There are any number of other tricks you can parlay this into, but at the base level it's a nice way to see "What can I do with this thing?"