Editor

In general, an editor refers to any program capable of editing files. Good examples are image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop, and sound editors, such as Audacity. The term editor is commonly used to refer to a text editor, which is a software program that allows users to create or manipulate plain text computer files. They are often used in the field of computer programming.

Assembler

An assembler is a type of computer program that interprets software programs written in assembly language into machine language, code and instructions that can be executed by a computer.

An assembler enables software and application developers to access, operate and manage a computer's hardware architecture and components.

An assembler is sometimes referred to as the compiler of assembly language. It also provides the services of an interpreter.

Compiler

A compiler is a special program that processes statements written in a particular programming language and turns them into machine language or "code" that a computer's processor uses. Typically, a programmer writes language statements in a language such as Pascal or C one line at a time using an editor. The file that is created contains what are called the source statements. The programmer then runs the appropriate language compiler, specifying the name of the file that contains the source statements.

Interpreter

An interpreter is a computer program that is used to directly execute program instructions written using one of the many high-level programming languages. The interpreter transforms the high-level program into an intermediate language that it then executes, or it could parse the high-level source code and then performs the commands directly, which is done line by line or statement by statement.