Hello! I've been reading about PyPy, but there are some things that I don't understand about it. I hope I can get some enlightenment in this newsgroup :)
First, the intro: <excerpt> "The PyPy project aims at producing a flexible and fast Python implementation. The guiding idea is to translate a Python-level description of the Python language itself to lower level languages." </excerpt> So the basic idea is that PyPy is an implementation of Python in Python (i.e.: writing Python's interpreter in Python), and then translate that into another language such as C or Java? How is it different from CPython or Jython then? Also, what does "translation" here mean? Translation as in, say, "Use Jython to translate PyPy to Java classes"? Or "Use Psyco to translate PyPy to native exec"? <excerpt> "Rumors have it that the secret goal is being faster-than-C which is nonsense, isn't it?" </excerpt> Why is this supposed to be nonsense if it's been translated to C? I mean, C version of PyPy vs. CPython, both are in C, then why is this supposed to be nonsense? It seems that I'm missing a lot of nuances in the word "translation" here. Also, this one: <excerpt> We have written a Python interpreter in Python, without many references to low-level details. (Because of the nature of Python, this is already a complicated task, although not as much as writing it in - say - C.) Then we use this as a "language specification" and manipulate it to produce the more traditional interpreters that we want. In the above sense, we are generating the concrete "mappings" of Python into lower-level target platforms. </excerpt> So the "language specification" in this paragraph _is_ the Python implementation in Python, a.k.a.: PyPy? Then what does "manipulate it to produce the more traditional interpreters" mean? I mean, it seems from what I read that PyPy is more about a translator that translates Python code into something else rather than implementing Python in Python. In that case, it could have been any other project, right? As in implementing X in Python, and then translate to another language? Thanks for any pointers! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
