Parrot - Overview

When we feed our program into conventional Perl, it is first compiled into an internal representation, or bytecode; this bytecode is then fed into almost separate subsystem inside Perl to be interpreted. So there are two distinct phases of Perl s operation:

Compilation to bytecode and

Interpretation of bytecode.

This is not unique to Perl. Other languages following this design include Python, Ruby, Tcl and even Java.

We also know that there is a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which is a platform independent execution environment that converts Java bytecode into machine language and executes it. If you understand this concept then you will understand Parrot.

Parrot is a virtual machine designed to efficiently compile and execute bytecode for interpreted languages. Parrot is the target for the final Perl 6 compiler, and is used as a backend for Pugs, as well as variety of other languages pke Tcl, Ruby, Python etc.

Parrot has been written using most popular language "C".