Is a bytecode file generated after the Clojure code compilation?

Question

I mean, is the generated bytecode directly fed to the JVM, or a .class file is created and the bytecode is saved there? And also, if a file is generated, is it generated for every evaluated expression?

Answer 1

In general, all Clojure code is compiled to bytecode in classes. If running from source, this is done dynamically and loaded using a custom classloader. Optionally you can compile code "ahead of time" and produce .class files on disk using the compile function.

Some simple top-level expressions evaluated at the repl are simply evaluated without compiling and loading classes.

Comments

It might not be clear what "dynamically" means in "this is done dynamically".
I think it's worth mentioning that bytecode is only stored in memory in this case and not saved to disk.

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Thank you very much!