The EM intermediate language is a family of

intermediate language An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good ...

s created to facilitate the production of portable

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

s. The language's specifications were created by

Andrew Tanenbaum Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the author ...

, Hans van Staveren, Ed G. Keizer, Johan W. Stevenson and they were implemented in the

Amsterdam Compiler Kit The Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) is a retargetable compiler suite and toolchain written by Andrew Tanenbaum and Ceriel Jacobs, since 2005 maintained by David Given. It has frontends for the following programming languages: C, Pascal, Modula-2, ...

(ACK). Unlike the

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free software ...

's (GCC) intermediate language, EM is a real

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

and could be implemented in hardware; a number of the language front-ends have

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

implemented in EM

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

. EM is a relatively high-level stack-based machine, and one of the tools supplied with ACK is an interpreter able to execute EM binaries directly, with a high degree of safety checking.

References

* * * Assembly languages Compiler structures {{prog-lang-stub