How are Python and C related? I've read that Python is 'made from C'. Does that mean that Python is just an abstraction of lots of large C functions?

• CPython

  166 59,431 10.0 Python

  The Python programming language

  

  C usually uses a compiler. For various reasons, writing a compiler for Python is hard so we usually use interpreters. That means we need a program (in machine code, so your computer understands it) that can interpret the Python code. Since we don't generally like writing machine code, we tend to write these in other languages that we can compile to machine code. So when you run "python foo.py", what you're doing is running a C program that reads your Python file and does stuff based on that.

• jython

  0 1,088 7.4 Python

  Python for the Java Platform

  

  The program I linked is the Python interpreter you're probably using, but the abstract set of rules that make up Python are not in any particular way tied to C. You could also use a Java program or a C# program to interpret your Python code. They've even made Python in Python itself, although it uses a more restricted version of Python so it's easier to compile it.

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• IronPython

  1 2,359 7.4 Python

  Implementation of Python 3.x for .NET Framework that is built on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime.

  

  The program I linked is the Python interpreter you're probably using, but the abstract set of rules that make up Python are not in any particular way tied to C. You could also use a Java program or a C# program to interpret your Python code. They've even made Python in Python itself, although it uses a more restricted version of Python so it's easier to compile it.

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