Compiler: What are all actions performed by compiler to convent high level program into low level ?

Question

What steps are performed by a compiler and how many types of compilers are present and used frequently ?

Answer 1

I have hands on with gcc compiler.
As per my knowledge, each compiler performs following actions:
1. Pre-processing
2. Compiling
4. Assembling
3. Linking

Prep-processor expands your .c file with the content of header files and also based on the defined flags.
Compiler take that as an input file and does the following.
1. Syntax Analysis
2. Semantic Analysis
3. Intermediate code generation
4. Code optimization
5. Code generation

The final output of compiling step is assembly code.
Assembler take assembly code as input and generate object code and then linker links all the object code files and generates executable file.

Please correct me if I missed any steps or stated wrongly.

Comments

Thanks Ganesh. Do you have any idea about creation of symbol table ?