interpreter vs. compiled

[Tim Roberts]

castironpi <castironpi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>In C, we have:
>
>int x, y;
>x= 10;
>y= x+ 1;
>
>It translates as, roughly:
>>
>8000 .data
>7996 ffffffff #x
>7992 ffffffff #y
>7988 .end data
>7984 loadi reg0 7996
>7980 loadi reg1 7992
>7976 loadi reg2 10
>7972 loadi reg3 1
>7968 storv reg2 reg0
>7964 add reg0 reg1 reg2
>7960 storv reg3 reg1

I don't recognize that assembly language.  Is that another intermediate
language?

>You are telling me that the same thing happens in IronPython. 

Yes, the same process happens.

>By the
>time the instruction pointer gets to 'x= 10', the next 7 instructions
>are the ones shown here compiled from C.

I most certainly did NOT say that, as you well know.  Different C compilers
produce different instruction sequences for a given chunk of code.  Indeed,
a single C compiler will produce different instruction sequences based on
the different command-line options.  It's unreasonable to expect a Python
compiler to produce exactly the same code as a C compiler.

However, that does disqualify the Python processor as a "compiler".

>CMIIW, but the CPython implementation -does- -not-.

And again, I never said that it did.  CPython is an interpreter.  the
user's code is never translated into machine language.

>My point is, CPython takes more than seven steps.  My question is,
>does IronPython?

So, if compiler B isn't as good at optimization as compiler A, does that
mean in your mind that compiler B is not a "compiler"?
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.