Compiler

From DmWiki

A compiler is a program designed to convert source code into machine language. Another way to understand this is considering that the compiler will usually change a human-readable programming language, such as C++, into the machine language that the computer understands directly.

Sometimes, people will erroneously assume that a program is a compiler, when in fact it is an IDE. The IDE is only a program designed to help the programmer write the source code, by providing convenient features such as syntax highlighting. The IDE is not responsible for converting the code into an executable program, although many IDEs are tightly integrated with compilers.

For many languages, including C++, compilation is a two-step process. First the compiler is run, converting each source file into an object file. Then the linker is run on the object files, which puts them together into a single executable file.

Some languages use other languages as a "back-end" such as an assembler or even another compiler. An example of this is sdlBasic which has a utility that compiles its Basic source code into C++ for compilation.

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