PROGRAM INTERPRETERS.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	PROGRAM INTERPRETERS.
Authors:	Chapman, Richard O.¹, Chang, Kai H.¹
Source:	Encyclopedia of Electrical & Electronics Engineering. 1999 1st Edition, Vol. 17, p310-322. 13p.
Subjects:	Interpreters (Computer programs), Programming languages, Automatic programming (Computer science), Computer software, Computer systems, Computer science
Abstract:	The article focuses on program interpreters in computers. A program written in machine language can directly drive the computer's hardware components, because each machine language instruction can be directly represented as a pattern of low and high voltages that, when applied to the computer's central processing unit, causes the specified computation to occur. When a machine language program is represented textually, the pattern of low and high voltages is written as a sequence of Os and 1s interpreted as a binary number. For human readability, other bases such as octal, decimal, or hexadecimal are also used for writing the numbers corresponding to the pattern of voltages in a machine language instruction.
Database:	Engineering Source

Description
Abstract:	The article focuses on program interpreters in computers. A program written in machine language can directly drive the computer's hardware components, because each machine language instruction can be directly represented as a pattern of low and high voltages that, when applied to the computer's central processing unit, causes the specified computation to occur. When a machine language program is represented textually, the pattern of low and high voltages is written as a sequence of Os and 1s interpreted as a binary number. For human readability, other bases such as octal, decimal, or hexadecimal are also used for writing the numbers corresponding to the pattern of voltages in a machine language instruction.