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Questions tagged [interpreted-language]

Questions about interpreted languages and program interpretation in general. A language implementation is interpreted if programs are executed by another program (the interpreter) as opposed to being transformed (compiled) into code that is directly executed by the machine.

An 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; 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.

For more information, see the Wikipedia entry about interpreted languages.
See also .

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How does an interpreter interpret the code?

For simplicity imagine this scenario, we have a 2-bit computer, which has a pair of 2 bit registers called r1 and r2 and only works with immediate addressing. Lets say the bit sequence 00 means add to our cpu. Also 01 means move data to r1 and 10…
Koray Tugay
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Why are Ruby method calls particularly slow (in comparison to other languages)?

I'm trying to read about Ruby performance, and came across this SO thread, where one of the answers mentions that "method calls, one of the most common operations in Ruby, are particularly slow." Another thread mentions that "It does "late lookup"…
grautur
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Speed Comparisons - Procedural vs. OO in interpreted languages

In interpreted programming languages, such as PHP and JavaScript, what are the repercussions of going with an Object Oriented approach over a Procedural approach? Specifically what I am looking for is a checklist of things to consider when creating…
cmcculloh
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Is Bash an interpreted language?

From what I've read so far, bash seems to fit the defintion of an interpreted language: it is not compiled into a lower format every statement ends up calling a subroutine / set of subroutines already translated into machine code (i.e. echo foo…
James Ko
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What gives Smalltalk the ability to do image persistence, and why can't languages like Ruby/Python serialize themselves?

In smalltalk, you're able to save the state of the world into an image file. I assume this has to do with Smalltalk's ability to "serialize" itself -- that is, objects can produce their own source code. 1) Is this an accurate understanding? 2) What…
dave paola
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Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?

Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?
AngryHacker
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Does it make sense to use Hungarian notation prefixes in interpreted languages?

First of all, I have taken a look at the following posts to avoid duplicate question. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1184717/hungarian-notation Why shouldn't I use "Hungarian Notation"? Are variable prefixes (“Hungarian notation”) really…
Andrey Rubshtein
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run interpret c++?

Is there a way i can run c++ code as interpreted instead of compiled? so i can edit code and write functions on the fly? Related: Have you used any of the C++ interpreters (not compilers)?
user34537
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Performance Comparison of Shell Scripts vs high level interpreted langs (C#/Java/etc.)

First - This is not meant to be a 'which is better, ignorant nonionic war thread'... But rather, I generally need help in making an architecture decision / argument to put forward to my boss. Skipping the details - I simply just would love to know…
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Is there anything to be gained from short variable names?

Is there anything to be gained memorywise and speedwise by having shorter variable-names in a language like python? And if so, what kind of situations would it be reasonable to consider this? Note I'm in no way advocating short variable names, I'm…
Daniel Figueroa
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Is Ruby really an interpreted language if all of its implementations are compiled into bytecode?

In the chosen answer for this question about Blue Ruby, Chuck says: All of the current Ruby implementations are compiled to bytecode. Contrary to SAP's claims, as of Ruby 1.9, MRI itself includes a bytecode compiler, though the ability to…
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Why Java is both compiled and interpreted language when the JIT also compiles the bytecode?

I read that, a java source code is compiled into 'bytecode' then it is 'Compiled' again by JIT into 'machine code'. That is, the source code is first compiled into a platform independent bytecode and then compiled again to a machine specific code. …
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Can Javascript be considered a interpreted language when using Google Chrome (V8)?

I was reading this excellent article on V8, Google's Javascript engine: https://developers.google.com/v8/design#mach_code. At one point, they say that Javascript is compiled directly into machine language, without any bytecode or an interpreter. To…
corazza
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Recursion overhead -- how serious is it?

Possible Duplicate: Is recursion ever faster than looping? I was first trained to program seriously in C, about 15 years ago. My employer wanted highly optimized code for computationally difficult tasks. I remember being advised more than once…
Josephine
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Linking and Loading in interpreted languages

In compiled languages, the source code is turned into object code by the compiler and the different object files (if there are multiple files) are linked by the linker and loaded into the memory by the loader for execution. If I have an application…
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