Program, Application, and Software

[Martin Gregorie]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:41:51 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:

> On 2010-11-18, Martin Gregorie <martin at address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 01:16:34 +0000, MRAB wrote:
>>
>>> I'd probably say that a "script" is a program which is normally not
>>> interactive: you just set it up, start it, and let it do its work (a
>>> "batch script", for example). It's also written in a language
>>> primarily designed for convenience rather than speed (Want to
>>> manipulate large chunks of text? Fine! :-)).
>>>
>> I use 'script' to refer to programs written in languages that don't
>> have a separate compile phase which must be run before the program can
>> be executed. IOW Python and Perl programs are scripts aloing with
>> programs written as awk, Javascript and bash scripts.
> 
> I use 'script' to refer to programs that are used to automate things
> that would otherwise be done by a person typing commands.
> 

Its a long-standing UNIXism - it applies to any language implementation 
where you can add "#!/path/to/interpreter" as the first line of the 
source file, make the file executable with chmod and run it by treating 
the file name as a command. 

> IOW, what I write using Python aren't scripts.  They're programs.
>
Anything with one or more executable lines is a program:

#!/usr/bin/python
print "\nHello, Python World\n"

  

-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |