interpreter vs. compiled

[Tim Roberts]

castironpi <castironpi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>You're saying the VM can't compile code.  That makes sense, it's not a
>compiler.

I wouldn't say "can't".  The current CPython VM does not compile code.  It
COULD.  The C#/.NET VM does.  IronPython, for example, is an implementation
of Python that uses .NET.  In that case, the code *IS* JIT compiled to
assembly when the program starts.

>Do I understand correctly that JIT does compile to native
>code in some cases?

VMs that use JIT do, yes.

>But that's not the only thing that stops python
>from precompiling to assembly directly.  GNU doesn't come with
>Python.

Do you mean Linux?

>What sorts of minimal information would be necessary to take
>from the GNU libs for the user's specific processor, (the one they're
>downloading their version of Python for), to move Python to the
>further step of outputting the machine code?

I don't know why you think GNU has anything to do with this.  There's
nothing that prevents the Python run-time from JIT compiling the code.
IronPython does this.  CPython does not.  It's an implementation decision.
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.