Python compilation ??

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:14:41 -0400, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>Evan Klitzke wrote:
>> On 7/2/07, Cathy Murphy <cathy at nachofoto.com> wrote:
>>> Is python a compiler language or interpreted language. If it is interpreter
>>> , then why do we have to compile it?
>>
>> It's an interpreted language. It is compiled into bytecode (not
>> machine code) the first time a script is run to speed up subsequent
>> executions of a script.
>>
>While the flavor of this answer is correct, in strict point of fact
>Python *doesn't* compile the scripts it executes, only the modules that
>are imported.
>
>That's why you will occasionally see a very small Python program that
>just calls functions imported from much larger modules. This avoids
>spending the time that would otherwise have to be spent recompiling a
>large script at each execution.

Hey Steve,

To nit pick :)  Wouldn't you say it is more accurate to say that it
does compile the scripts (by which we mean the "main" file - either
the one passed as an argument to the interpreter on the command line,
or the one with a #! at the top which gets respected, or the .py file
on Windows which is associated with python.exe as its interpreter),
but that it doesn't save the results of this compilation to a file to
be used next time?

Jean-Paul