Firstly... decide whether you're going to use "interpreter" or "interpretor"...
"The interpretor converts each instruction into machine code, 1s and 0s, and sent to the processor. The processor executes the instructions."
Well, I've actually got a feeling it's more a business of jumping to pre-prepared code rather than building new machine code, but I'm not quite sure about that.
"A compiler does the same, except instead of simply running the program, the program is saved in machine language form so that the interpretor could be left out."
I hope that's right, but it doesn't explain why compiling an empty file gives you a 10 kb exe!!
I've heard a few stories about brun45.exe being an interpreter itself for the language a qb .exe is in, and when you compile a standalone it just adds brun45 onto the exe...
I'm not quite sure about that, if anyone knows better please enlighten us.