Interpreted Programming Languages and Interpreters: Insight and Coding Procedure

In a senior-level computer science course, Programming Languages, Dr. Janine Marburg assigned a semester-long project requiring the development of an interpreter, a computer program that executes another computer program. This paper highlights the development process of the interpreter project. Interpreters are often used in conjunction with a programming language designed specifically for use with an interpreter. These programming languages are known as interpreted programming languages. Interpreted programming languages have many advantages over compiled programming languages, usually at the cost of program execution speed. A program written in an interpreted programming language generally has a longer execution time because the source code has to be converted, or interpreted, before it is executed each time the program is run.