Jean-Paul Calderone wrote: > On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:03:12 +0100, Stefan Behnel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: >> Take a look at Cython. It's an optimising Python-to-C compiler for >> writing >> Python extensions. So you can basically take a Python module and >> compile it to >> C code that runs against the CPython runtime. >> >> http://cython.org/ > > It's a not-quite-Python-to-C compiler.
Ok, there are differences. For example, you can't define functions dynamically (it doesn't currently support closures anyway). But it already supports a much wider subset of the language than Pyrex originally did. For example, you can use list comprehensions and Python 3 keyword-only arguments in function signatures. I would expect it would compile quite a lot of Python code out there without or with only minor modifications. > I don't think it is an optimizing > compiler either. Can you provide a reference for this? It optimises a lot of common patterns into very fast sequences of Python API calls (or even generates specialised non-API code for them). It also generates optimised runtime code for special cases based on the type of an object (e.g. if the object you iterate turns out to be a list, it uses fast list API calls in loops, and a standard iterator otherwise). So the generated code is usually much faster than what Pyrex gives you. Robert and I had an optimise session lately where we dropped the function call-overhead by some 20-50% (!) compared to the preceding Cython version (not even to Pyrex), just depending on the signature. I think that qualifies for an "optimising" compiler. Stefan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
