Compiler Interpreter

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An interpreter is a computer program that directly executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without previously compiling them into a machine language program. An interpreter generally uses one of the following strategies for program execution:

• parse the source code and perform its behavior directly.
• translate source code into some efficient intermediate representation and immediately execute this.
• explicitly execute stored precompiled code made by a compiler which is part of the interpreter system.

These days some high-level languages are converted (compiled) into an intermediate code, a machine code for a machine that does not actually exist, but which is then interpreted by an emulator. Sometimes the conversion to the intermediate code is done on-the-fly and/or on demand.

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