Is Python really a scripting language?

[John Nagle]

Chris Mellon wrote:
> On Dec 14, 2007 2:07 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:43:18 +0100, Bruno Desthuilliers
>> <bruno.42.desthuilliers at wtf.websiteburo.oops.com> declaimed the
>> following in comp.lang.python:
>>
>>> I still wait to see any clear, unambiguous definition of "scripting
>>> language". Which one are you refering to here ?
>>>
>>         Strangely, once you leave the realm of "shell" languages (DCL, JCL,
>> bash, etc.) I can think of only ONE language that I'd consider a true
>> "scripting language"... ARexx on the Amiga, as it could "address" any
>> application that created a compatible ARexx message port.
>>
>>         This meant one could write ARexx programs that could, by changing
>> the "address", send application native commands to an application,
>> retrieve returned data, and then send that data to a second application
>> using its native commands.
>>
>>         No hassle with subprocess spawning or pipe I/O blocking...
>>
> 
> Applescript works in a very similar way.

     Yes.  One of the basic design flaws of UNIX was that interprocess
communication was originally almost nonexistent, and it's still not all that
great.  It's easy to run other programs, and easy to send command line
parameters, but all you get back is a status code, plus console-type output.

     The UNIX world might have been quite different if, when you ran a
subprocess, at the end you got return values for the command line
parameters (argv/argc) and the environment back.  Then programs
would behave more like big subroutines.  But all you get back
is a status code, so running programs from a "script" tends to be
a somewhat "blind" one-way process.

     The UNIX world now has various forms of interprocess communication,
but none of them is as pervasive as Microsoft OLE and its successors on
Microsoft platforms.

     There's CORBA, for example, and in theory
you can script OpenOffice and Gnome via CORBA.  But nobody does that.
Exercise: write a Python program to convert a ".doc" file to a ".pdf"
file by invoking OpenOffice via CORBA.  At least in theory, this is
possible.  All the necessary parts supposedly exist.  Somebody
tried back in 2003, but gave up. See
"http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2003-April/198094.html"

					John Nagle