[Compiler-sig] Python Bytecode

[Guido van Rossum]

> The *.pyc files are 8 bytes of header (a magic number and a time
> stamp, though I can't remember which order...) followed by a
> marshalled code object.  So if you wan't to have a completely
> independent VM, you first need to write a demarshaller ...
> documentation is probably the source of Modules/marshal.c.

If you get JPython, there's marshalling code written in Python that
may be easier to read than the C code.

Also, get Jeremy Hylton's compiler (see this sig's homepage or
archives), he has routines for generating Python bytecode files
written in Python.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)