Adding to Bryan's answer, if you simply want to compile a file or a bunch of files from a terminal, the py_compile module can be executed as a script in the following manner:

python -m py_compile fileA.py fileB.py fileC.py ...

The py_compile module provides a function to generate a byte-code file from a source file, and another function used when the module source file is invoked as a script.

python -m py_compile fileA.py fileB.py fileC.py

I think it's impossible to specify named arguments with -m option. If -m is necessary, you can create a wrapper that runs py_compile and pass arguments with sys.argv.

$ cat compile_it.py

import sys
import py_compile
# cfile` is named argument for destination filename
py_compile.compile(sys.argv[1],  cfile=sys.argv[2])

And use it with: python -m compile_it abc.py /Users/documents/abc.pyc

Or without -m: python compile_it.py abc.py /Users/documents/abc.pyc

python yourfile.py

You have to have python installed first. It will automatically compile your file into a .pyc binary, and then run it for you. It will automatically recompile any time your file changes.

http://www.python.org/download/

You can see what is happening if you try it in the interactive interpreter:

>>> compile(open('test.py').read(), 'read.py', 'exec')
<code object <module> at 0x10b916130, file "read.py", line 1>

The compile built-in compiles the source lines into a code object. To actually run the code object, you need to exec it:

>>> codeobj = compile(open('test.py').read(), 'read.py', 'exec')
>>> exec(codeobj)
Hello, world!
Hello, world!
>>>

Note that there are some differences here between Python 2 and Python 3, primarily that exec is a statement in Py2 but a built-in function in Py3. The above should work in either.