On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 6:14 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: > While FORTRAN or C couldn't operate on functions like this, an assembly > language program could easily. Simply compose a CPU instruction sequence > on the fly, mark it executable and use the "CALL" opcode to transfer > control to your constructed function.
... right up until the point where you realize that this is a massive security vulnerability, so you get a segmentation fault (or "protection fault" under Windows) for trying to execute a non-executable segment. > In the same vein, you could understand the "def" statement as a runtime > compiler that takes the function body, compiles it into machine language > and assigns the start address to the given variable. In fact, that would > be a perfectly working way to implement "def." Whether it would be a > smart thing to do is a different question. Key is, though, that "def" > always creates a new *data* object that can be called as *executable > code*. Here's a simpler way to describe it: The 'def' statement creates a function and assigns it to the name given. Tada! No need to talk about compilers and addresses and stuff, which are utterly irrelevant in Python. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
