The easiest way to call C from Python seems to be ctypes.

Simple Example on Windows

>>> import ctypes
>>> libc = ctypes.CDLL("msvcrt")
>>> print libc.strlen("Hello!")
6
>>> libc.printf("Argument");
Argument8
>>> num_bytes = libc.printf("the number %d and string %s\n", 10, "spam")
the number 10 and string spam
>>> print num_bytes …

The exec statement in Python can be used to run code sourced from somewhere at runtime. However, it's important that the line endings are \n, not \r\n.

I was loading code from a database at runtime, and I had a problem where running the script resulted in a Syntax Error. …

We have a strange situation where we have Oracle 10, linked to Oracle 8, linked to Oracle 7. This is so we can keep an existing front end that only supports the Oracle 7 database, whilst developing a new one that only supports Oracle 10. What fun.

We got this …