Peter Hansen wrote:Not required except for performance reasons. If the .pyc files don't exist, the .py files are recompiled and the resulting bytecode is simply held in memory and not cached and the next startup will recompile all over again.
but the other files *are* compiled, right?
Yes, definitely. I did say that.
so the initial question remains unanswered:
No it doesn't. I thought I was clear, but I can reword it for you: the files are compiled *in-memory* and the results are never written to disk.
> *if* they are compiled, where are they put, if the
corresponding *.py files are on a non-writeable directory?
They are not put anywhere. Compilation is a process by which the source is converted to executable bytecodes. This says nothing about where either the source or the compiled result resides. The actual compilation works on a long series of bytes in memory, and the result is just another long series of bytes. Nothing requires that either of these things are even stored in a file.
Not sure what else I could say to make it clearer...
(I'm not misunderstanding you am I? I get the feeling we're not quite on the same page here.) -Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
