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18 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is a translator? |
A program that converts high-level or assembly-level commands into machine commands. |
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What is opcode? |
The part of an instruction that tells the CPU what operation is to be done |
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What is operand and give an example of what it often is? |
The part of an instruction that tells the CPU what to apply the operation to - often an address |
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What is a low-level language? |
A language understood by the the computer than works deep into the hardware and not on a user interface level |
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Give an example of a low-level language. |
Machine code such as pure binary |
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What type of language are programs generally written using? |
High-level |
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What is an assembler? |
Software that translates assembly language programs into machine code. |
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What is assembly language? |
A low-level language that uses a mnemonic to represent binary opcode. |
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What will a translator called an assembler do? |
It will translate mnemonics into pure binary required by the processor. |
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What is source code? |
The program written by the programmer in a high-level language before it is converted into machine code. |
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What is object code? |
The machine code produced by the translator to be run on the computer. |
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What is a high-level language? |
Languages more like human languages that make programming easier. Each instruction represents several machine code instructions. |
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What does an interpreter do? |
Translates each line of high-level code into the equivalent machine code then executes it before translating the next line. |
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What does a compiler do? |
Translates the complete program in order to be executed. |
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Advantages of interpreters: |
- Easier to debug - Errors reported as processed - Useful for code experimentation - Program can run on any machine without a suitable interpreter. |
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Advantages of compilers: |
- Executable file is unreadable, securing the code from others. - Compiled code runs faster - No need for a translator in memory - Optimise code to be more efficient |
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Disadvantages of interpreters: |
- Runs more slowly - Source code is available - |
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Disadvantages of compilers: |
- When developing |
