I am using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, and the host computer runs Windows Vista 32 bit. If I build a project, is there any intermediate files generated (.assembly, .class, .module etc.)? Or just the obj files?
I have also heard that The compiler may create other intermediate files as well, but they will be deleted automatically once the compile is finished. Is it true?
You are probably confusing "temporary" files with "intermediate" files for starters. The compiler/linker may well generate other "temporary" files during its operation but the point of that is that they are temporary, and should get cleaned up automatically, unless your compiler crashes perhaps.
Intermediate files generally don't get cleaned up unless you "Clean" the project, because the whole point of an intermediate file is to retain a partially built item that feeds into the build process. For example, an OBJ file or a LIB file contains the necessary link-level information, and generated code, to allow the linker to function. Link-level information is not actually needed in the final EXE (unless it is being embedded for debugging reasons). If a particular source file has not changed from one build to the next, then the corresponding OBJ does not need to be regenerated, and since compilationis expensive in both compute and I/O terms, you definitely don't want that intermediate file disappearing at the end of each compile.
Some other intermediate files don't feed into the build process so much as help the develop/debug process, such as .PDB (debugger) files. In a similar fashion you only want to regenerate this file if the EXE changes, not everytime you run the application in the debugger.
It should not be something that you particularly worry about. The most important thing is that when you deploy/package your application don't include extraneous stuff (like said intermediate files) that have no function on the target host (ie. *not* the development host) and only serve to bloat the installer's size.
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