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Asked: 2026-06-16T00:42:20+00:00

Many built-in libraries use C implementations whenever possible. For example, heapq uses lib-dynload/_heapq.so if

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Many built-in libraries use C implementations whenever possible.

For example, heapq uses lib-dynload/_heapq.so if it’s available.

Where can I find source code of modules like _heapq?

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  1. Editorial Team

    To see the code for any version of CPython, go to:

    Replace the 3.3 with 3.2, 2.3, whatever for older versions. You can also explicitly put an hg revision number instead of a major.minor version, if you know what you’re looking for.

    The C modules are mostly inside the Modules subdirectory, and each one is generally named foo.c or foomodule.c, while the Python libraries are in the Lib subdirectory, named foo.py.

    In the case of heapq, the actual heapq module is in Python (Lib/heapq.py), but it uses a C module named _heapq (Modules/_heapqmodule.c).

    Of course you can also download the source. On the front page of http://python.org there are “Quick Links” for “Source Distribution” for the latest 2.x and 3.x versions, or you can click Download for all the other releases. The structure is, as you’d expect, the same thing you see at http://hg.python.org.

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