Hello, On Mon, 09 Jun 2014 14:01:18 +0000 Brett Cannon wrote:

On Sat Jun 07 2014 at 5:55:29 PM, Le Pa wrote:

...

Hi,

I am interested in learning how the cpython interpreter is designed and implemented, and also how the python debugger works internally. My ultimate purpose is to modify them for my distributed computing needs. Are there any documentations on these please? I have done some goggling but failed to find anything useful.

Thanks you very much for your help!

The only documentation we have is (roughly) how the parser and compiler work, not the interpreter. As for pdb, it's written in Python so you can look at the source to see how that works without much issue.

But doing attentive googling will turn out a lot of 3rd-party blog posts which discuss various implementation aspects of CPython (and even alternative implementations). Some random links: http://tech.blog.aknin.name/category/my-projects/pythons-innards/ http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/09/18/python-internals-symbol-tables-part-... http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200804/the_structure_of_pyc_files.html One should keep in mind that implementation evolves all the time, and any info in older docs may be obsolete. So, the ultimate reference is the source itself, but posts like above can be a good help to understand it more easily and effectively. -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com

On 6/9/2014 12:26 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Paul Sokolovsky mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

On Mon, 09 Jun 2014 14:01:18 +0000 Brett Cannon mailto:bcannon@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat Jun 07 2014 at 5:55:29 PM, Le Pa mailto:lpanl09@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > I am interested in learning how the cpython interpreter is designed > > and implemented, > > and also how the python debugger works internally. My ultimate > > purpose is to > > modify > > them for my distributed computing needs. Are there any > > documentations on these please? I have done some goggling but > > failed to find anything useful. > > > > Thanks you very much for your help! > > > > The only documentation we have is (roughly) how the parser and > compiler work, not the interpreter. As for pdb, it's written in > Python so you can look at the source to see how that works without > much issue.

But doing attentive googling will turn out a lot of 3rd-party blog posts which discuss various implementation aspects of CPython (and even alternative implementations). Some random links:

http://tech.blog.aknin.name/category/my-projects/pythons-innards/ http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/09/18/python-internals-symbol-tables-part-...

FWIW I have a bunch of those, and the symbol table one is probably not the best for beginners. The whole category is here: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/category/programming/python/python-internals/

Perhaps someone could make a wiki entry such as PythonInternals with links such as these. -- Terry Jan Reedy