What is the function of an assembler in programming?

The function of an assembler is specifically to turn assembly language into machine code, which is the low-level code understood directly by the computer's hardware. Assembly language is a symbolic representation of machine code, allowing programmers to write instructions in a more human-readable format compared to binary or hexadecimal machine code. The assembler translates these instructions into the corresponding binary code that the CPU can execute.

This process is crucial because it bridges the gap between high-level programming abstractions and the actual operations that the microprocessors perform. While an assembler plays this specific role, other choices relate to different processes: converting high-level languages is the role of a compiler, memory management is typically handled by the operating system, and compiling source code could involve various translations beyond just assembly language.