Re: What is an interpreter?

Paul Robinson <tdarcos@mcimail.com> writes:
>How do we determine when
>something is a "real" interpreter of a "real" language, and when it
>doesn't quite reach that point?


Since this is a pedantic exercise, here's a pedantic answer: Turing
equivalence. All other useful language features can be simulated.


>File I/O, I think is the knife that cuts the "toys" from the "real"
>languages.


This would be useless in a language without some control features,
like iteration or functions.


In general, "perceived utility" is a bad way to classify languages
(or interpreters), because people disagree on what features are useful.


--
Mark Leone <mleone@cs.cmu.edu>
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
--

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