Source code

Source code is the human-readable text of a program. It is fed to a compiler, which produces an output file, that either immediately, or after additional processing, can be invoked to get the desired results. If a compiler translates source code to a form which is used by another language compiler (or an assembler), that too is source code for that compiler. Object code, on the other hand, is the output instructions to be executed, along with symbolic information. Once it has been processed by a linker, it can then be executed like any other program.