On Jan 19, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

> Honestly, I don't know, but Perl files are saved as Perl files. Python
> files, the first time you run them, get compiled to .pyc files. Perl
> files run through a Perl interpreter; Python files never actually run
> at all. Only the .pyc files run.

Yeah I know, but I guess that's orthogonal to having high-level  
opcodes or not. Broadly speaking, it is a matter of generating an  
intermediate file or not. In fact there's a Perl bytecode generator  
(B::Bytecode) and a source filter[*] that interprets it (ByteLoader),  
though those are not normally used.

-- fxn

[*] For those not into Perl, a source filter is a special module that  
intercepts source code before it arrives to the parser, and it is  
free to modify it at its will. Filters can be chained, and once they  
are done the parser receives the result and the regular flow follows.