what does 64-bit python mean?

[Christian Heimes]

Chris Rebert wrote:
> It's been compiled for 64-bit processors, so it uses 64-bit pointers
> and 64-bit small integers. And I would think it would only work w/ C
> extension libraries also compiled for 64-bit CPUs. So, the same
> meaning 64-bit has for anything else really.

A 64bit build of Python doesn't necessarily mean that the small integer
type is 64bit, too. Python uses the datatype long on all platforms. On
Windows sizeof(long) == 4 (four bytes) on 32 and 64 versions of Windows.

Christian