Novel Thoughts on Scripting and Languages

[James Huang]

> If that's your definiton, all programming languages of which
> I'm aware are "scripting languages".  At least under Linux,
> issuing "OS commands"  is a standard library function accessible
> to all languages.  C and assembly language can both use the
> exact same system() or exec calls that Python and Perl do.

Gee... Anyway, this is what I call scripting:

   copy '*.java, *.jj' except '*Test*' in '~/src/'
        recursive echo
        to '~/archive/today';

   copy '*.java, *.jj' except '*Test*' in '~/src/'
        recursive echo
        into '~/archive/today_src.jar';

This is programming, "scriptingly":

   do 'http://www.google.com' as sgml
   {
   <a>:   println '<a>   link: ', $_.href;
   <img>: println '<img> link: ', $_.src;
   }

This is pure programming:

   for i from 1 to 10 {
     println i;
   }