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expose CELL status of a symbol in symtable #143504
Description
Feature or enhancement
Proposal:
symtable symbols have the following predicates, but for some reason no is_cell. Is there a reason for this, or should we expose is_cell as well?
'is_annotated', 'is_assigned', 'is_declared_global', 'is_free', 'is_global', 'is_imported', 'is_local', 'is_namespace', 'is_nonlocal', 'is_parameter', 'is_referenced'The symbol obviously knows whether it's a cell:
>>> st.get_children()[0].get_symbols()[0]._scope_str
<bound method Symbol._scope_str of <symbol 'x': CELL, USE|DEF_LOCAL>>Has this already been discussed elsewhere?
No response given
Links to previous discussion of this feature:
No response
Activity
Yashp002 commented on Jan 7, 2026
I did look this up in the issue tracker, python-dev/python-ideas archives, and discuss.python.org for symtable is_cell and it doesn't seem have to been discussed elsewhere.
picnixz commented on Jan 7, 2026
@Yashp002 Core developers usually don't need to discuss some features. We appreciate your dedication to contribute but please let triagers or core devs decide whether an issue should be kept open or not. In this case, it's not even about exposing it but rather asking for something.
I'm pretty sure I asked this question myself when I worked on #120029 but I didn't follow up. I think we can add it for completeness as it's not really costly and that's the only way to know whether something is in a CELL scope or not (scope being private and scope_str being a string, hence unstable).
Yashp002 commented on Jan 7, 2026
I can put together a PR to add is_cell to symtable then, since it sounds like a straightforward addition for completeness.
Also was not my intention to be prying into a core dev's authority, that's my bad.
iritkatriel commented on Jan 7, 2026
Thanks. Also maybe a get_cells to go with the existing get_frees.
Yashp002 commented on Jan 21, 2026
@iritkatriel Could you verify my PR, I've added get_cells, is_cell and also the test_cells in test_symtable.py for the build.
Please let me know If I have to further fix anything:D
gh-143504: Expose CELL status of a symbol in symtable (#143549)
pythongh-143504: Expose CELL status of a symbol in symtable (python#1…