Compiler and Interpreter Breakdown #

Compiler #

Compiler transforms code written in a high-level programming language into the machine code, at once, before program runs.

• Compiler displays all errors after compilation

Compiler Options #

Compiler Pros #

• Compiled code runs faster
  • Offers easy syntax validation before runtime.

Compiler Cons #

Interpreter #

Interpreter converts each high-level program statement, one by one, into the machine code, during program run. Interpreter displays errors of each line one by one

Interpreter Optons #

Interpreter Pros #

• Interpreters are easier to use
  • Line by line analysis provides low level of complexity to small operations, not great for function calls

Interpreter Cons #

• Interpreted code runs slower

Discussion #

• With prolog as our interpreter, we can take our grammar / code form, line by line, and feed our parse tree responses back to our primary compiler.
  • In order to do this, we must set a DCG parse tree predicate in prolog, as well as a intermediate compiler on our front side, which can be in any higher level language.
• The team has elected to use prolog for our interpreter, and this will take a tokenized input from our language, and return a parse tree to the compiler.