CompuServe Messages

>>>Jerry>>> However, at the risk of getting in over my head, I am confused about "external" vs. "internal" compilers. For example, I had a bit of experience with Turbo Pascal. Is it's compiler external or internal? Can you give me an example of a language using each and a black box description of what it does? It's my pleasure to get back to you on this, Jack. These are good questions, and it's this exchange which follows segments which creates half the benefit of the telecourses. If you go back to your QuickBasic experience, do you remember that you had the ability to "run" the program before ever creating a standalone executable? The program was internally compiled at that point, which is why we had debug and tracing options during its execution. When you created an .EXE file to run on it's own though, no tracing or debugging could be performed any longer. This had been externally compiled. QB.EXE was an internal compiler (did not require linkage, etc. to run the application) whereas .EXE's either relied on a "BRUN" local external library or added compiled portions of the language in the .EXE. This was why a simple program which did nothing but print your name was so huge– it carried with it the compiled portions of the language necessary to run the program at all. Turbo Pascal has both types of compilers with it also; you can run the application while in programming mode, or create a standalone (externally compiled). <<<Jerry<<<