wanted: regex or code to find valide def statements in a line

[Skaperen]

does the python engine parser move to the lines that follow before checking the first line for errors? counting continuations as one line ... must the line that begins with "def" (followed by white space) have the ":" on that line? must that line end with ":" (not counting comments)? i can't think of a legal "def" that does not end with anything other than ":" optionally followed by a comment. what does the python engine need to know from the lines that follow to correctly determine the validity of the first line?