> What exactly here makes any compiler/interpreter distinction important? In my book, a compiler is an algorithm that (if implemented correctly) terminates for

> What exactly here makes any compiler/interpreter distinction important? In my book, a compiler is an algorithm that (if implemented correctly) terminates for every input. An interpreter (of a Turing-complete language) will obviously occasionally not terminate. This distinction is very important when composing software. Your distinction has the flaw that you assume that "execution" happens only once, while it is perfectly reasonable for an interpreted program to yield another program.