Step 1

• The programmer uses an editor to write the program.
• After writing, the file is saved on the hard disk with the name demo.c.
• The contents of demo.c are human-readable and human-understandable.

Step 2

• The preprocessor accepts the .c file as input and generates an expanded version of the .c file.
• The file created by the preprocessor is demo.i.
• .i stands for intermediate code.
• The contents of the demo.i file are human-readable and human-understandable.

Step 3

• The output of the preprocessor is provided as input to the compiler.
• The compiler is software that converts the program from one language to another.
• In our case, the compiler converts the program from a human-readable format into a machine-dependent format, which is assembly language.
• The file created by the compiler has the extension .asm or .s.
• The newly created file by the compiler is demo.asm.

Step 4

• The output of the compiler is passed as input to the assembler.
• The assembler is software used to convert the program from a machine-dependent format into a machine-understandable format.
• The output of the assembler is a file with the extension .obj.
• In our example, the newly created file is demo.obj.
• Demo.obj contains the code in binary format but is not directly executable.

Step 5

• The linker links the .obj file generated by the assembler with its dependent .obj files.
• The linker generates the output with the extension .exe.
• In our case, demo.exe is the output of the linker.

Step 6

• The .exe file generated by the linker is stored on the hard disk.
• To execute any application, it has to be loaded into RAM.
• The loader is responsible for loading the .exe file from the hard disk into RAM.
• After loading, the .exe file is considered a process and gets executed with the help of the operating system.