[Tutor] General Programming Question

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> I'd like to know if there was a way to compile Python to 
> native machine code, 

Of course its possible to do this since *every* program you run 
runs as native machine code - there aint no other way! But in Pythons 
case the native machine code of the interpreter is translating the 
program as it goes... To build a truly native code compiler for 
Python would be intensely difficult given Pythons very dynamic 
nature - we can construct code based on user input and then execute 
it - you need the interpreter functionality builtb into every 
program anyway!

> would it run as fast as say C++ or Java?  

Given the above  even if you built a native code compiler its 
speed would depend on how the author wrote the program - if it 
used dynamic code generation then no - OTOH you can't write 
that kind of code at all in Java or C++!

BUT in my informal tests Python is very oftenb as fast, or faster 
than Java so thats not an issue. It is however significantly slower 
than C++ (just as Java is - about 5-10 times depending on JVMs etc).

Alan G