the term is somewhat undefined; in essence any language may be implemented by having a compiler or even using an interpreter. a combination of each solutions is as well progressively most common: the compiler potty translate the source code into occasionally medium form (typically known as bytecode), which is then passed to an interpreter which executes it.

the program translated by the compiler is typically tremendously sooner than an interpreter executing the equivalent program: potentially a 10:1 ratio is non rare. A mixed guide's efficiency is occasionally someplace within between. A downsides of the "compiler" guide come a inherent complexness of a good implementation, & hanker edit-run cycles.

The pure compiler implementation is the average guide for great-subordinate languages, because it comes out when supplementary "natural", & because of efficiency concerns; all the same by having occasionally effort these are universally conceivable to write compilers possibly for traditionally interpreted languages such as Lisp and Prolog.

A select few languages that come usually considered to become compiled:

Fortran A personal of C programming language, including C++, C# and Objective C but not Java Ada, Pascal, and Delphi Algol programming language, including Algol 60 and Algol 68

Tools
ANTLR CodeWorker Lex Yacc GNU bison