DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMPILERS AND INTERPRETERS

1. SANEESH .P
IIT MADRAS

2. Computer programs which provide the instructions
that enable the computer hardware to work
Set of instrctions
Set of programs

3. CLASSIFICATIONS
 Operating systems
 Utilities
 Application software
 Computer languages
 Assemblers
 Compilers and interpreters

4. OPERATING SYSTEMS
 Programs that performs basic tasks
 Input from keyboard to o/p to screen
 Keep track of files and directories
 Controlling the peripherals
 Eg: windows xp,7,vista,8,linux,ubuntu etc.

5. UTILITIES
 Programs that performs specific tasks
 Calculator utility
 Applications are made up of such utilities that
performs tasks like saving,opening,closing a file.

6. APPLICATION SOFTWARE
 Various programs designed to perform a range of
tasks.
 Tools that assist graphics to home, personal,
education activities etc.
 Word,ppt, excel etc.

7. COMPUTER LANGUAGES
 Medium of communication
 Classified in to four
 Machine languages
 Assembly languages
 Programming languages
 Fourth generation languages.

8. COMPILERS
 A compiler is a piece of code that translates the
high level language into machine language.
 The compiler scans the entire program first and
then translates it into machine code which will be
executed by the computer processor.


9. INTERPRETERS
 Interpreters are not much different than compilers.
 They also convert the high level language into
machine readable binary equivalents
 Each time when an interpreter gets a high level
language code to be executed, it converts the code
into an intermediate code before converting it into
the machine code.
 Each part of the code is interpreted and then
execute separately in a sequence and an error is
found in a part of the code it will stop the
interpretation of the code without translating the
next set of the codes.

11. DIFFERENCES
 The interpreter takes one statement then translates
it and executes it and then takes another statement.
While the compiler translates the entire program in
one go and then executes it.
 Compiler generates the error report after the
translation of the entire page while an interpreter
will stop the translation after it gets the first error.
 Compiler takes a larger amount of time in analyzing
and processing
 overall execution time of a code is faster for
compiler relative to the interpreter.

13. ASSEMBLERS
 Assembler is a software or a tool that translates
Assembly language to machine code.
 Advanced assemblers provide additional features
that support program development and debugging
processes.
 For example, the type of assemblers called macro
assemblers provides a macro facility.
 Compilers usually produce the machine executable
code directly from a high level language, but
assemblers produce an object code which might
have to be linked using linker programs in order to
run on a machine.

14. THE END..