Do programming language compilers first translate to assembly or directly to machine code?

Question

I\'m primarily interested in popular and widely used compilers, such as gcc. But if things are done differently with different compilers, I\'d like to know that, too.

Answer 1

GCC compiles to assembler. Some other compilers don't. For example, LLVM-GCC compiles to LLVM-assembly or LLVM-bytecode, which is then compiled to machine code. Almost all compilers have some sort of internal representation, LLVM-GCC use LLVM, and, IIRC, GCC uses something called GIMPLE.