[Discuss] Compiling/running user-supplied Python code

[Brian Quinlan]

noel at natnix.com wrote:
> Looks like python's eval() doesn't like "def foo():" statements. 

eval() doesn't like ANY statements. eval() only works with expressions.

> I got
> it to work with eval(compile()) though:
> 
> defstr = "def foo(): print('foo!')"
> eval(compile(defstr, '<defstr>', 'exec'))
> 
> evalstr = "foo()"
> eval(evalstr)

Instead of munging your statements into an expression, you can just use 
exec, which already works with statements.

Cheers,
Brian