CREATING AND RUNNING PROGRAM - PART II

2. System Development Tools :

The successful development and execution of programs requires the usage of a number of tools. Some of these typical system development tools are :

• Language Translators 
• Linkers
• Debuggers
• Editors

Language Translators :

• Assembler : An assembler is a computer program that translates assembly language statements into machine language codes. The assembler takes each of the assembly language statements from the source code and generates a corresponding bit stream using 0's and 1's. The output of the assembler in the form of sequence of 0's and 1's is called "object code" or "machine code". This machine code is finally executed to obtain the results.

• Compiler : The compiler is a computer program that translates the source code written in a high-level language into the corresponding object code of the low-level language. This translation process is called "compilation". The entire high-level program is converted into the executable machine code file. A program that translates from a low-level language to a high-level one is a "decompiler". Compiled languages include COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, etc.Though early compilers are written in assembly language, nowadays it has become common practice to implement a compiler in the language it compiles. Compilers are also classified as "single-pass compilers" and "multi-pass compilers". Though single-pass compilers are generally faster than multi-pass compilers, for sophisticated optimization, multi-pass assemblers are required to generate high quality code.

• Interpreter : The interpreter is a translation program that converts each high-level program statement into the corresponding machine code. This translation process is carried out just before the program statement is executed. Instead of the entire program, one statement at a time is translated and executed immediately. The commonly used interpreted language are BASIC and PERL. Although, interpreters are easier to create as compared to compilers, the compiled languages can be executed more efficiently and are faster.

• Linkers : Most of the high-level languages allow the developer to develop a large program containing multiple modules. Linker arranges the object of all the modules that have been generated by the large translator into a single program. The execution unit of the compiler system is incapable of linking all the modules at the execution time and therefore, linker is regarded as one of the important software because of its ability to combine all the modules into a single program. Linker assemblers are various objects generated by the compiler in such a manner that all objects are accepted as a single program during execution.                                           

Debugger : Debugger is the software that used to detect the errors and bugs present in the program. The debugger locates the position of the error in the program code with the help of Instruction Set Simulator (ISS) technique. ISS is capable of stopping the execution of a program at the point where an erroneous statement is encountered. Debugger is divided into two types, namely-level debugger and symbolic debugger. The machine-level debugger debugs the object code of the program and shows all the lines where bugs are detected. On the other hand, the symbolic debugger debugs the original code, i.e., the high-level language code of the program. It shows the position of the bug in the original code of the program developed by the programmer. In order to debug the program, a debugger helps perform the following tasks :        

1. Step-by-step execution of a program   

2. Back tracking for checking the previous steps        

3. Stopping the execution of the program until the errors are corrected.

                                                
Editors : Editor is a special program that allows the user to work with text in a computer system. It is used for the documentation purposes and enables us to edit the information present in an existing document or file. The editor enables us to perform various editing operations such as copy, cut and paste while editing the text. On the basis of the content edited by the editors, they are divided into the following categories :                                                               
1. Text editor : It is used edit the plain text. An operating system always includes a text editor for updating the configuration files.                                                                                             

2. Digital Audio Editor : It is used to edit the information related to the audio components of a multimedia application. These editors are used in audio applications where editing the music and sound signals is necessary.                                                                                                                   

 3. Graphics editor :  It is used to edit the information related to the graphical objects. These editors are generally used in the multimedia applications where the user is working with multiple animation objects.                                                                                                                    

4. Binary File Editor :  It is used to edit the digital data  or the binary data, i.e., data having strings of 0's and 1's.                                                                                                                        

5. HTML Editor : It is used to edit the information included in the web pages.                         

6. Source Code Editor : It is used to edit the source code of a program written in a programming language such as C, C++ and Java. 

Thank You For Visiting,

Please Follow and Share, 

Follow me on Facebook and Google+,

Suggest me new topic to write in my next post, in comment section.