@ 26/04/2004 17:54 : wrote Thiemo Seufer :
Program: Software which is intended for execution on an actually existing interpreter. Data: Software which is not ~. Thiemo
You are a real bad boy :-) So, I will give some food for the brain:Mozilla actually gets a PNG, SVG, from the Web and executes the instructions there (put some pixel of this color here, draw a line from point A to point B).
"$ cat file.txt" gets a text file and executes the ASCII/UTF/LATIN/etc words there as instructions "send letter A to the terminal", "send letter S to the terminal", "send letter S to the terminal", send letter H", and so on.
Every data is *interpreted* in some by some piece of the software you run. Even if it's only to display it in some form you can recognize. This e-mail text, p.ex., is being transformed from text (UTF?) to font glyphs, to drawings in the screen in front of me by a combination of Mozilla and Windows 98 software. Every single char in it is *interpreted* so it can be drawn on the screen.
-- br,M