For a beginner, it can often be confusing to understand the difference between a compiler and an interpreter.
Even in an interview, we may take some time to think and respond to the question, 'Which compiler languages do you know?'.
Before diving deeper, Keep this in mind
Source Code: This is the high-level language written by humans, which machines cannot understand directly.
Machine Code: This is a low-level language that machines can understand and execute, represented in binary (0s and 1s), making it difficult for humans to comprehend.
Both compilers and interpreters performs conversion of source code, which is human-readable, into machine code, which is understandable by computers.
Compiler: A compiler translates the entire source code into machine code before the program runs. This means that the entire program is analyzed and converted at once, which can take some time but results in faster execution.
Interpreter: An interpreter converts the source code into machine code line by line as the program executes. This allows for immediate execution but can lead to slower performance since each line must be analyzed and executed in real-time.
However, the key difference lies in how they approach this task.
Compiler:
A compiler converts the entire source code into machine code before the program is executed.
The compiler analyzes the complete program and generates the machine code all at once.
Compiled code generally runs faster than interpreted code.
Compilers can check for both syntactic and semantic errors before execution.
More Efficient
Interpreter:
An interpreter converts the source code into machine code line by line as the program is being executed.
The interpreter analyzes and executes the code one line at a time.
Interpreted code may run slower than compiled code.
Interpreters typically only check for syntactic errors, not semantic errors.
Less Efficient
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