Mac OS X's python binary icons

06 July 2007 6 comments MacOSX

This blog post is 11 years old! Most likely, its content is outdated. Especially if it's technical.

The mac os x icon for .pyc files is a document with a background of ones and zeros but the foreground is a 16 ton weight. WTF?! What's the 16 ton got to do with anything?

Perhaps I got it all wrong. Maybe this is the icon used for many different files but I had a look around and couldn't find any other file that uses the 16 ton image in the icon.

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betabug 06 July 2007 Reply

It's not like that on a standard 10.4 (or 10.3) Mac OS X with stock python or python compiled from source ... all I got on .pyc files is a blank icon. Maybe this comes from some python binary installer? Or else some other program uses the .pyc extension?

Matthew Schinckel 06 July 2007 Reply

This image has to do with the original naming of python, from Monty Python's Flying Circus. They used to have animated scenes, which often included 16 ton weights squashing people.

And giant feet, too.

Peter Bengtsson 09 July 2007 Reply

It's used on a DVD box apparently:
http://www.newvideo.com/productdetail.html?productid=NV-AAE-72952

Matthew Schinckel 06 July 2007 Reply

Oh, and on my system I now get a lovely blue/yellow ying-yang style icon.

Aye 06 July 2007 Reply

I think this is kind of a visual reference to Monty Python. As far as I know, the programming language Python is named after them.

cheers,

Aye

Anonymous 28 November 2014 Reply

Just to be clear, python bytecode files are the "squashed" version of the source code.

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Mac OS X's python binary icons

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