Martin v. Löwis a écrit : >>> (2) it is a interpretation language >> Not quite. It's compiled to byte-code - just like Java (would you call >> Java an 'interpreted language' ?) > > Python is not implemented like Java. In Java (at least in HotSpot), > the byte code is further compiled to machine code before execution;
This is a VM-specific feature. > in Python, the byte code is interpreted. Idem. > Whether this makes Python an interpreter or a compiler, > I don't know. This is an old troll^Mdiscussion !-) Now IANAL, but AFAIK, the byte-code compilation stage can make a great difference performances-wide, and for a same language, a byte-compiled implementation is likely to be faster than a pure-interpreted one, at least because of the saving on parsing time (please someone correct me if I'm wrong) ... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list