It’s Portable

The standard implementation of Python is written in portable ANSI C, and it compiles and runs on virtually every major platform currently in use. For example, Python programs run today on everything from PDAs to supercomputers. As a partial list, Python is available on:

 

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  • Linux and Unix systems
  • Microsoft Windows and DOS (all modern flavors)
  • Mac OS (both OS X and Classic)
  • BeOS, OS/2, VMS, and QNX
  • Real-time systems such as VxWorks
  • Cray supercomputers and IBM mainframes
  • PDAs running Palm OS, PocketPC, and Linux
  • Cell phones running Symbian OS and Windows Mobile
  • Gaming consoles and iPods
  • And more

Like the language interpreter itself, the standard library modules that ship with Python are implemented to be as portable across platform boundaries as possible. Further, Python programs are automatically compiled to portable byte code, which runs the same on any platform with a compatible version of Python installed (more on this in the next chapter).

What that means is that Python programs using the core language and standard libraries run the same on Linux, Windows, and most other systems with a Python interpreter. Most Python ports also contain platform-specific extensions (e.g., COM support on Windows), but the core Python language and libraries work the same everywhere. As mentioned earlier, Python also includes an interface to the Tk GUI toolkit called tkinter (Tkinter in 2.6), which allows Python programs to implement full-featured graphical user interfaces that run on all major GUI platforms without program changes.