Programming language translators Flashcards
What is an assembly?
A low-level language, with each instruction in assembly code almost always being equivalent to one machine code instruction.
Why is there different variations of assembly code?
Machine code instructions that a particular computer can execute (the instruction set) are completely dependent on its hardware, and therefore each different type of processor will have a different instruction set and a different assembly code.
What is a relationship between high-level and low-level?
Many to one, several lines of code instructions are required to achieve the same result as a single line of high-level code.
What is an assembler?
A program, which translated into equivalent machine code, or an intermediate form called byte code. Thus, assembly code program can be executed.
How does an assembler work?
A assembler program takes each assembly code instruction and converts it to 0’s and 1’s of the corresponding machine code instruction.
The input to the assembler is called the source code and the output (machine code) the object code.
What is a compiler?
A program that translates a high-level language such as: Visual Basic, Python etc. into machine code.
How does the compiler work?
The source code, which is the code written by the programmer is input as data to the compiler, which scans through it several times, each time performing different checks and building up tables of information needed to produce the final object code.
Why is there different compilers?
Different hardware platforms will require different compilers, since the resulting object code will be hardware-specific e.g. Windows and the Intel microprocessors comprise one platform, Apple and PowerPC processors another, so separate compilers are required for each.
What is an interpreter?
A different type of programming language translator, once the program has written and saved a program
