Compiling a Python File on Mac OS X Tiger

[Asad Habib]

Hello. I am working on Tiger and wanted to find out how to compile a
Python (.py) file into a .pyc file and then into a .pyo file. Can the
compilation be achieved within the interpreter? Also, I am
new to Python and wanted to know the difference between .pyc and .pyo
files. Is this comparison similar to C? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

- Asad