narrowc

A lightweight compiler that turns a narrow, explicit subset of Python into C. Anything outside that subset falls back to running as normal Python — nothing silently breaks.

Spec

See python-to-c-compiler-spec-1.docx for the full supported / not-supported breakdown.

Getting started

unzip narrowc.zip

Build & run

 gcc -std=c11 -Wall -Wextra -O2 ast_walker.c -o ast_walker \
       $(python3-config --embed --cflags --ldflags) -lm
./ast_walker --check yourscript.py      # check if it's in the supported subset
./ast_walker yourscript.py output.c     # compile to C
gcc -std=c11 -O2 output.c -o output -lm # compile the generated C
./output

Benchmark

A benchmark script is included to compare compiled vs. interpreted speed.

Note: The raw benchmark speedup is not accurate as-is — GCC's -O2 can fold simple accumulator-style math into a closed-form result, which inflates the number. The real, measured speedup on a genuine compute-bound loop (built with -O0) is closer to 35x.

License

MIT