pyvm -- faster python

[Stelios Xanthakis]

Roger Binns wrote:

>>could You tell us a bit more about Your motivation to create an
>>alternative C-Python interpreter?
> 
> 
> I'd also be curious to know if the performance gains would remain
> once it gets fleshed out with things like closures, long numbers,
> new style classes and a C library compatibility shim.
> 

I guess it will.  There are several places with /*XXX:speed up*/
and a couple more ideas to gain exrta speed.  On the other hand
pyvm does not check for Bad Internal Calls and other checks Cpython
does to be OK in all cases (for example if __cmp__ modifies a list
while it's being sorted, in pyvm you *can* get a crash).

There is no plan to implement closures; unless there is a way to
turn closures to default arguments with bytecode hacking.  But yes,
closures are interesting, especially in generator expressions and
lambdas.

I am not very interested on C compatibility.  Once the source is
open people can implement it if they want but I'd rather go with
an advanced ctypes module which will make loading dynamic libraries
a matter of python code.


Stelios