On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 AM, Mathew Kurian <bluejamesb...@gmail.com> wrote: > As long as the processor can only read only numbers (binary), Racket cannot > be interpreted by the machine before being translated into another language > such as Assembly. Assembly is then translated to numbers or binary/machine > code If that is the case, Racket has to be an interpreted language since it > is layered on Assembly. Or I may just be completely wrong in my perception of > that part.
Machine code is the binary representation of commands that the machine understands. Assembly is a textual representation of the same commands, usually with a one-to-one mapping to machine code. Often people use the term assembly to mean either the binary or textual representation depending on context. The distinction is a bit arbitrary, as with a one-to-one mapping you can convert from one to the other with no loss of information. In a sense all languages are interpreted, as the CPU interprets the machine code. (Though as John pointed out often the machine code is compiled into some inaccessible internal representation.) In the sense you're asking, Racket compiles into machine code at run-time. If you want to play around with creating and running your own machine code from Racket, my assembler project at Github shows how it can be done: http://github.com/noelwelsh/assembler HTH, N. _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
