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What is Interepreter and Compiler?

▪︎ we generally write a computer program using a high-level language.A high-level language is one which is understandable by us humans.It contains words and phrases from the English language.

▪︎ But a computer does not understand high-level language.It only understands program written in 0's and 1's in binary,called the machine code.

▪︎ A program written in high-level language is called a source code.we need to convert the source code into machine code and this is actioned(accomplished)by "compilers" and "Interpreters".

▪︎ Hence,a compiler or an Interpreter is a program that converts program written in high-level language in to machine code understand by the computer.

Note:

■ Interpreted languages do not need to be compiled to run. A Program called an Interpreter will run python code on any kind of computer it can run on itself.

■ This means if the programmer needs to change the code they can quickly see the results.

■ This also means python is slower than a compiled language like 'c' , because it is not running machine code directly.

Differences between 'Interpreter' and 'Compiler' :

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INTERPRETER:

• Translates program one statement at a time.

• It takes less amount of time to analyze the source code but the overall execution time is slower.

• No intermediate object code is generated, hence are memory efficient.

• Continues translating the program until the first error is met, in which case it stops. Hence debugging is easy.

• Programming language like python , ruby use interpreters.

COMPILER:

• Scans the entire program and translates it as a whole into machine code.

• It takes large amount of time to analyze the source code but the over all execution time is comparitively faster.

• Generates intermediate object code which futher requires linking,hence requires more memory.

• It generates the error message only after scanning the whole program. Hence debugging is comparitively hard.

• Programming language like C, C++ use compilers.