Does Bash eventually produce machine language that the CPU directly runs or does Bash some how implement system calls? What are the applications that are involved with this and what are the files. An overview of this would be helpful.



Thanks / Reputation (whatever) in advance!

Bash doesn't do any of that. It's an application, like any other.

It does make system calls when necessary, such as when launching programs.

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Well, eventually, yes. But there are quite a few steps between what you write and what the CPU does. At the simplest -the very, very, simplest- for an interpreted program there must be an interpreter which reads a text (or scrunched text; tokenised, or similar technology) program and converts that text into actions that are carried out.

What the CPU does -what the CPU must do- is runs instructions that it understands (actually, that's a bit of a 'cart-before-the-horse' statement; whatever series of bits/bytes/words/longwords it gets, it executes according to the instruction set; with the exception of illegal opcodes and the like, there is no question of the cpu going 'duh, I don't understand this, I'm not doing anything'; it is an instruction and the cpu follows the definition for that particular instruction it and anthropocentric concepts like 'understanding' doesn't really come into it.)

Yes, it makes system calls, if that's what you mean by 'implement'. it would be difficult to write complex software without system calls or the equivalent.

Applications? GCC, for example? Or, for you, is an application something like 'Open Office', so a compiler can't be one?

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