PROSENJIT DAS

• Apr 27th, 2006

 

Java was designed to not only be cross-platform in source form like C, but also in compiled binary form. Since this is frankly impossible across processor architectures Java is compiled to an intermediate form called byte-code. A Java program never really executes natively on the host machine. Rather a special native program called the Java interpreter reads the byte code and executes the corresponding native machine instructions. Thus to port Java programs to a new platform all that is needed is to port the interpreter and some of the library routines. Even the compiler is written in Java. The byte codes are precisely defined, and remain the same on all platforms.