Interpreted language is a programming language in which programs are 'indirectly' executed ("interpreted") by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly' executed by the host CPU. Theoretically, any language may be compiled or interpreted, so this designation is applied purely because of common implementation practice and not some essential property of a language. Indeed, for some programming languages, there is little performance difference between an interpretive- or compiled-based approach to their implementation.
Many languages have been implemented using both compilers and interpreters, including BASIC, C, Lisp, Pascal, and Python. While Java is translated to a form that is intended to be interpreted, just-in-time compilation is often used to generate machine code. The Microsoft .NET Framework languages always compile to Common Intermediate Language (CIL) which is then just-in-time compiled into native machine code. Many Lisp implementations can freely mix interpreted and compiled code. These implementations also use a compiler that can translate arbitrary source code at runtime to machine code.
Read more about Interpreted Language: Historical Background of Interpreted/compiled, Advantages of Interpreting A Language, Disadvantages of Interpreted Languages, List of Frequently Used Interpreted Languages
Famous quotes containing the words interpreted and/or language:
“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.”
—Dennis Altman (b. 1943)