Do you consider Python a 4GL? Why (not)?

[Laurent Pointal]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Jun 2013 18:17:33 -0700, Dan Stromberg <drsalists at gmail.com>
> declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
> 
>> Perhaps "Scripting language" is the best general category we have that
>> Python fits into.  But I hope not.
> 
> Heh... Having encountered ARexx (the Amiga version of REXX), Python
> is NOT a scripting language... The ARexx implementation (along with the
> Amiga's interprocess communication system) allowed for scripting any
> application that opened an "ARexx Port"... Other than, maybe, the
> original IBM REXX, I've not seen any other REXX implementation that
> would permit embedding application specific commands into a script.
> 
> Python's subprocess (and related) are all based on explicit startup
> and communication over stdin/stdout... Nothing like:
> 
> address TextEditor	/* a fictitious application port */
> 'DN 5'	/* move down five lines *?:
> 'MARK'		/* start a selection	*/
> 'RW 5'	/* move right five words */
> 'COPY'	/* copy selection to operation result */
> string = result
> address PageSetter	/* fictitious here, but a real program */
> 'PASTE' string	/* insert selected string into page document /*
> 
> Yes, maybe the above could be done as two sessions of subprocess --
> presuming both programs had a command line interface. But what if the
> script was going to switch between the two of them throughout one
> session.

For me this is not a DSL, but an external API of an application, like you 
have with COM under Windows, DBUS under Linux. Unix streams are just an 
ancestor way of communication, you could have local-RPC also, or CORBA.

So, as this is just inter-process communication procotol, if you have the 
Amigaes interprocess communication system tool written for Python, you could 
easily write things using a Python syntax:

te = TextEditor()
te.dn(5)
te.mark()
te.rw(5)
te.copy()
string = te.result()
ps = PageSetter()
ps.paste(string)

Python is a scripting language, and a nice one to use as glue between 
different components, eventually of different technologies.

(note: if you have more than one process to control via streams, you can 
open more than one pipe)

And... here http://www.solie.ca/articles/pythonmod/pythonmod.html
you could find modules for using Python with Amiga APIs and combining it 
with ARexx.

> The C compiler suites used this ability to read the error log from a
> compile, and move to the line/column in the source file associated with
> each error. (Before "integrated" development environments)

This is a + for compiled environments that you effectively cannot have with 
Python, non-syntaxic errors found at runtime.

A+
Laurent.

-- 
Laurent POINTAL - laurent.pointal at laposte.net