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The first line is obviously the language version. What is the second line in IDLE at startup? It looks like the ID of a C-compiler.

Here it is for version 2.7 (GCC):

Python 2.7.12 (v2.7.12:d33e0cf91556, Jun 26 2016, 12:10:39) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin

... and version 3.7 (Clang):

Python 3.7.3 (v3.7.3:ef4ec6ed12, Mar 25 2019, 16:52:21) 
[Clang 6.0 (clang-600.0.57)] on darwin

More importantly what does it mean for the language? Is it the Python interpreter's compiler and does it mean something about speed and performance of this version of the language? I always think of this language in terms of being "interpreted" and not "compiled" so how does knowledge of the interpreter's compiler benefit me as a programmer?

ThisClark
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  • Python scripts are interpreted by the python binary, which is compiled. – Ken White Jul 26 '19 at 02:52
  • @Taegyung: Yeah, you're right. I misspoke - didn't pay attention to *darwin* in the message. Managed to correct it before the edit window expired. Thanks for pointing it out. :-) – Ken White Jul 26 '19 at 02:55
  • Thanks for the dup link. That answers my question. – ThisClark Jul 26 '19 at 03:15
  • These two lines are one line wrapped because of how narrow your window is. This line, `f"Python {sys.version} on {sys.platform}\n"`, is printed by *python* when you start the standard shell either from an icon or by entering `python` or `python3` in the terminal. IDLE imitates the standard interpreter by printing the same line. – Terry Jan Reedy Jul 26 '19 at 15:12

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