just exactly what is a compiler? Ive heard of borland and microsoft.... what is the difference of the different types of compilers out there?

Borland and Microsoft Visual Studio are IDE's, or more accurately they are developement suits as they include an editor, compiler, linker, debugger, etc in one neat package.

A compiler translates programming language codes into binary codes that are understood by the CPU. Borland and Microsoft are the main C compilers, but there are several free C compilers.

GCC, is another main compiler, but its for Linux.

so therefore... each programming language has its own compiler?

Or interpreter, yes

And for the difference between a compiler and an interpreter, think of it this way. A Compiler will consider the program as a whole , while the interpreter will translate the code one line at a time . (This is in lay man's terms, ofcourse)

A compiler processes the code and generates an executable file, it only needs to be done once and anytime you want to use the program you just run the executable. An interpreter processes the code during program execution, that is everytime you want to run the program, you must use the interpreter. Some languages are hybrids, like java. Java programs must be compiled but must also be run using an interpreter.

There's no requirement that there only be one compiler (or interpreter) for each language, too. There's heaps of c compilers, but everyone uses the same perl interpreter.

OK I got it now! Thanx...

"GCC, is another main compiler, but its for Linux. "

No, it can run just about everywhere. Look for DJGPP and cygwin (cygwin.com) for ports to Windows. GCC also runs on basically everything from AIX to Xenix. So saying that it is limited to the GNU/Linux system is a huge misunderstanding.

True, but its the mian Linux compiler.

No it is the main GNU compiler... so any GNU compatible OS will probably use GCC (in some form).

GCC is the compiler that ships with FreeBSD (I think it does with Open and Net as well, but I forgot) and Mac OS X. It is also (apparantly) widely used for embedded devices (notice what archs it supports, e.g. CRIS).

Yes, its the main GNU compiler, but its also the main compiler used on Linux, well I guess the EGCS, but isnt it the same? And your right, its also used for FreeBSD, and ports for other OSs.

EGCS was a fork of GCC 2.7 and was merged back in 2.8 (or was it 2.8 and merged back in 2.9? I keep forgetting). EGCS was forked from GNU GCC because a lot of people were angry over how slowly GCC was progressing. The EGCS project was merged back into the main GCC project with the steering committee and other stuff. See http://gcc.gnu.org for a detailed explanation.