Is Python programming language?

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/9/2013 6:53 PM, Michael Torrie wrote:
> On 02/09/2013 04:26 PM, Tim Roberts wrote:
>> Most people would call bash a "scripting language", but it is also clearly
>> a programming language.  It has syntax, variables and expressions.  I
>> suspect it is Turing-complete, although I haven't seen a proof of that.
>>
>> I would assert that scripting languages are a proper subset of programming
>> languages, not a separate category.
>
> I'm pretty sure Bash is turing complete.  I know it's been shown that
> sed is turing complete, and awk probably is too!  If I recall, the way
> to show a language is turing complete is to implement a turing machine

If the language has arrays, conditional execution, and explicit (while) 
loops or recursion, you can be pretty sure it is Turing complete. I 
presume this covers awk and bash. Something like the game of Life, where 
the looping in implicit in the operation, is much harder to show Turing 
complete. I suspect sed is non-trivial also.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy