python, a scripting language?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "Erlend J. Leiknes" <nookieNO_SP_AM at online.no>:
| A friend of mine which is a java programmer insists on that python is
| scripting language...
|
| I belive the term "script" is outdated because of "precompilation".
| The term for a script-language is that you write and run your program as
| text?
|
| Anyway... I would be happy to hear some reasons why python is not a
| scripting language...

It can be a scripting language, but it's relatively awkward in that
role.  The best scripting languages are either purpose-built, like
the Bourne shell for UNIX command scripting or Applescript for MacOS
application scripting, or highly adaptable syntactically, like Lisp,
Tcl, REXX.  Python programs tend to be more involved in computation.

"Script" refers to the automation of a procedure.  There is some
computation, but in support of the automation.  Function completion
status, some analysis of outputs, option processing, iteration over
parameters.

It's not universally understood that way, though, and in these days
the term "scripting language" isn't generally known to have any
rigorous meaning at all.  The only thing less meaningful is "systems
language", and put together to make a taxonomy of programming languages
as Osterhout did some time back, the result is useless in the extreme.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu