Searching for the best scripting language,

[David Eppstein]

In article <FYrzc.96743$DG4.77631 at fe2.columbus.rr.com>,
 Carl Banks <imbosol at aerojockey.invalid> wrote:

> I took it to mean the same thing you did (you might note that shell
> scripts are listed as having verbose execution, which pretty much can
> only mean that one thing).
> 
> My point was, Perl's interactive interpretter isn't "real"; to get it,
> you have to invoke the debugger, or use a little Perl program to get
> the effect.  Likewise, Python's verbose execution isn't "real"; you
> can't get it with a simple command line argument.  You have to define
> a settrace function.
> 
> Yet, they list Perl as having an interactive interpretter, by Python
> as not having verbose execution.  Smells like a someone has an
> unconscious bias here.

The command lines they used for getting an interactive interpreter are 
listed near the bottom of the page
http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/scripting-language/
for perl, the line is
    perl -de 1
and the verbose execution command is
    perl -d:Trace
If you know of a batteries-included and similarly easy way to get 
verbose execution of some sort for Python, I suggest you send it to them 
via the email link at the top of the page -- I've found them open to 
feedback and suggestions.

BTW, the shell script verbose execution is "sh -x".

-- 
David Eppstein                      http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science