ESE 345 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Debug Symbol, Sym Motors, Virtual Memory

• School: Stony Brook University
• Department: Electrical Engineering
• Course: ESE 345
• Professor: Mikhail Dorojevets

Document Summary

Interpreter: directly executes a program in the source language. Translator: converts a program from the source language to an equivalent program in another language. In general, we interpret a high level language when efficiency is not critical and translate to a lower level language to up performance. Interpreter closer to high-level, so you can give better error messages. Interpreter is slower (10x) but code is smaller (2x) Interpreter provides instruction set independence: can run on any machine. Translated/compiled code almost always more efficient and therefore higher performance. Important for many applications, particularly operating systems. Translation/compilation helps hide the program source from the users. One model for creating value in the marketplace (ex: microsoft keeps all their source code secret) Alternative model, open source , creates value by publishing the source code and fostering a community of developers. Recall: a key feature of c is that it allows you to compile files separately, later combining them into a single executable.