interpreters vs compilers #30
Description
The difference between compilers and interpreters for Prolog systems is a bit confusing. Some mature systems implement both (in the same way that Javascript V8 engine contains both a bytecode emulators and JIT engines), many interpreters work at different abstraction levels (clause level or bytecode), some preprocessing (beyond parsing) is required in many cases, etc.
Perhaps it would be possible to find a better classification? For examples, distinguish between full system implementations (usually with frontends, interpreter, compiler, libraries, development tools) and experimental or smaller systems (which may be or not experimental or focused on dedicated applications, better suited for embedding into another host language, etc.).