>I am new to Python, about 1 day. And I downloaded from > python.org Pythong2.4, it has the command line and > junk. But what actuall program compiles the source of > python into a program?
When you run a python script python compiles the source internally before executing it. If your program imports modules, the imported code gets converted into compiled code and you will see it in the form of .pyc files. Python works in a similar fashion to VB and Java in that it executes compiled byte code, not native machine code. The Python program has the same function as both the Java compiler and JVM interpreter. If you use Jython instead of Python you will find a separate python compiler that produces true Java code that then can be run under any JVM. If you want to produce standalone windows executables there are several tools available, the simplest and most widely used being py2exe. This is not part of the standard distribution however. Basically what all these tools do is wrap the Python program and all of the modules you use into one single executable file - so its quite big and if you distribute several programs you duplicate python with each one!! In this case distributing the python scripts with a one-off version of Python is a better option. The included distutils package can simplify that process. > And also, is Python capable of writing an OS? Not really since python requires the python program to be present in some form and it itself needs an underlying OS. You could write an OS simulation as a learning excercise but it would need a minimal OS underlying it. Python is a high level programming language aimed at developing applications with the minimum effort. If you really need to twiddle the bits n' bytes you are better off with C or assembler, just be prepared to write a lot of code... HTH, Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web tutor http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
