Language Processors

Posted by AJ × 06:51
A compiler is a program that can read a program in one language (source language) and translate it into an equivalent program in another language (target language). If the target program is an executable machine-language program, it can then be called by the user to process inputs and produce outputs.

An interpreter is another common kind of language processor. Instead of producing a target program as a translation, an interpreter appears to directly execute the operations specified in the source program on inputs supplied by the user.

The machine-language target program produced by a compiler is usually much faster than an interpreter at mapping inputs to outputs. An interpreter, however, can usually give better error diagnostics than a compiler, because it executes the source program statement by statement.

A language-processing system typically involves – preprocessor, compiler, assembler and linker/loader – in translating source program to target machine code.


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