A faster Python?, Python compiler, Dylan,...

[Jan Kybic]

> > It would be so much easier if I could just compile parts of the
>                                         ^^^^
> You make it sound so simple...

Well, translating something like:


def fib(a):
        if a <= 2: return 1
        else: return fib(a-2) + fib(a-1)

into:

 int fib(int a) {                   
     if(a <= 2) return 1;
        else return fib(a-2) + fib(a-1);  }

does indeed seem to be simple, once you know that 'a' is an integer.
         
> Have you looked at psyco?

Yes, very impressive once it does what it promises. It is more
ambitious than what I had in mind in that it does not use any
assistance (type information) from the programmer.

> Well, there was boundless (it made me exceed my quota on the mail
> server I was using ot the time) discussion on the types-sig on
> more-or-less this sort of topic a couple of years back, although
> perhaps more of the focus was on guaranteeing correctness than
> optimization.  You could read that, but you don't want to.

Yes, I remember. I did not quite buy the correctness argument, runtime
checking is fine with me, but for a compiler it might be very useful, IMO.

> It's possible, perhaps even desirable, that psyco could be extended in
> this fashion.  Got a spare man-month or so?  I haven't.

No, neither have I, sorry. :-( Maybe later.

J.

-- 
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Jan Kybic <kybic at ieee.org>      Robotvis, INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
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