Ok guys I thought I’d take my old CS notes and look through compiler theory a little more. I have to say I can’t for the life in me remember how all this stuff works but I do have a nice sample application from my college days that helps me understand a few things.
This sample application takes the made up language and compiles it down to an intermediate assembly code like language. There is then a simple VM implementation that takes this intermediate language and executes the statements.
The thing I cant get my head around is, if I this were a straight up interpretor and not a compiler would it still be building up these intermeditary commands in memory to be executed at the end. Or does an interpretor actually ‘execute’ descreet sections of the code chunks at a time?
Parsers don’t compile. There are actually quite a few steps involved when translating a program (from say a high level language like C++ to machine code). It depends on the design if it executes in one go or after multiple passes over the input. Can you make your question a bit more specific? Meanwhile, however much you hate it, have a look here — specially the frontend and backend sections.