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GCSE Computer Science · key term
Binary instructions that a processor can execute directly. The instructions are specific to a particular processor type.
Used by OCR
Paper 2
Revise: Levels of Programming LanguagesMachine code is a low-level language consisting of binary instructions: patterns of 1s and 0s that the processor can execute directly. The meaning of an instruction depends on the processor type. Machine code written for one processor type is therefore not necessarily usable on another.
Instructions represented in binary that a processor can execute directly.
Machine code consists of binary instructions. Hexadecimal can represent binary more compactly for humans, but it is not what the processor executes.
Say that a translator converts source code into machine code, not simply that it ‘makes the code work’.
Machine code is binary, but not every binary file contains instructions that a processor can execute.
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