In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which is used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU).
Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very specific task, such as a load, a store, a jump, or an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) operation on one or more units of data in the CPU's registers or memory.
Machine code is a strictly numerical language which is designed to run as fast as possible, and may be considered as the lowest-level representation of a compiled or assembled computer program or as a primitive and hardware-dependent programming language.
While it is possible to write programs directly in machine code, managing individual bits and calculating numerical addresses and constants manually is tedious and error-prone.
For this reason, programs are very rarely written directly in machine code in modern contexts, but may be done for low level debugging, program patching (especially when assembler source is not available) and assembly language disassembly.
The majority of practical programs today are written in higher-level languages or assembly language.
The source code is then translated to executable machine code by utilities such as compilers, assemblers, and linkers, with the important exception of interpreted programs, which are not translated into machine code.
However, the interpreter itself, which may be seen as an executor or processor performing the instructions of the source code, typically consists of directly executable machine code (generated from assembly or high-level language source code).
Machine code is by definition the lowest level of programming detail visible to the programmer, but internally many processors use microcode or optimise and transform machine code instructions into sequences of micro-ops.
This is not generally considered to be a machine code.
Last Updated on 3 years by pinc