I am trying to find characteristics in programming languages that "define" or indicate that it is compiled or interpreted.

I even tried asking it on StackOverflow. However no one answered it and 5 users downvoted it without explanation.

Either the answer is "There is none" or people misunderstood it.

The first misunderstanding is people answering:

- Compiled languages are translated to the machine code of a specific machine, it analyzes the whole code at once, can perform optmizations on compile time, etc.

- Interpreted languages are translated to a different kind of bytecode where a Virtual Machine has to interpret it and then translate to the machine it is running on; It analyzes the code on the fly, can present more precise error message, it distributes the program as a small package, etc.

Those are characteristics of the process compilation/interpretation and not the language itself.

I am looking for something like:

1) Compiled languages present system calls or OS specific code.

Does anyone know any reference or example that confirm/deny the above?

I am trying to find characteristics in programming languages that "define" or indicate that it is compiled or interpreted.

I can't think of any. If you can make an interpreter for a language, you can make a compiler for the language. If you can make a compiler for the language, you can make an interpreter for it too.

However, in some languages you can "rewrite" the code inside of your program. That is, in your code, you can possibly write code that generates other code (at run time) and runs the generated code. These types of languages are often interpreted, but again, you can compile these languages too (you just have to make the program capable of compiling the generated code).

There's no rule that says "this language must be compiled" and "this language must be interpreted."

Thanks Cornstalks.

That is one of the responses I was looking for.

However, in some languages you can "rewrite" the code inside of your program. That is, in your code, you can possibly write code that generates other code (at run time) and runs the generated code. These types of languages are often interpreted, but again, you can compile these languages too (you just have to make the program capable of compiling the generated code).

It helps not to think of compilation and interpretation as binary options.

Yes, you are right. My post doesnt emphasize this but I was not trying to segregate the languages.

I think it is possible to design a hybrid language, that is partially compiled and partially interpreted, right?

>>- Interpreted languages are translated to a different kind of bytecode where a Virtual Machine

Not exactly, a Virtual Machine has a different purpose, Java is a compiled language and still uses a VM.

The idea is more of a translator, I know, but it is generally called emulator/virtual machine...

Java has some static compiling options, but it stil partially interpreted, right?

EDIT: Thanks for making me read the wikipedia article again. I found a quote similar to Cornstalks there

Theoretically, any language may be compiled or interpreted, emulated or executed natively, so this designation is
applied purely because of common implementation practice and not some essential property of a language.

I will review language design, computer grammar, etc.

Any language that has has the ability to execute an arbitrary string as code needs to have an interpreter, and those are the languages that use interpreters as the primary launch point.

You can always ship a compiler and linker with your software, and exec() can invoke the compiler and linker, and load the resulting executable into the current process image...

It's not pretty, but it's been done more than a few times, and I wouldn't really call it an "interpreter".