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Novel Thoughts on Scripting and Languages

Grant Edwards grante at visi.com
Wed Jan 8 00:02:15 EST 2003 
In article <52719db8.0301071948.71364a03 at posting.google.com>, James Huang wrote:

>> If that's your definiton, all programming languages of which I'm aware are
>> "scripting languages".  At least under Linux, issuing "OS commands" is a
>> standard library function accessible to all languages.  C and assembly
>> language can both use the exact same system() or exec calls that Python and
>> Perl do.
> 
> Gee... Anyway, this is what I call scripting:
> 
>    copy '*.java, *.jj' except '*Test*' in '~/src/'
>         recursive echo
>         to '~/archive/today';
> 
>    copy '*.java, *.jj' except '*Test*' in '~/src/'
>         recursive echo
>         into '~/archive/today_src.jar';

Then python isn't a scripting language, since it can't do that sort of
stuff.  I think.  I don't know what the language above is nor what the
example does, but it appears to be manipulating files more-or-less directly
the way a shell script does.

Here is how you do an os command in C:

 system("ls -l >foo");
 
Here is how you do the same thing in Python:

 os.system("ls -l >foo")

Not much difference, eh?

> This is programming, "scriptingly":
> 
>    do 'http://www.google.com' as sgml
>    {
>    <a>:   println '<a>   link: ', $_.href;
>    <img>: println '<img> link: ', $_.src;
>    }
>
> This is pure programming:
> 
>    for i from 1 to 10 {
>      println i;
>    }

Then python is "pure programming".

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  .. I don't understand
                                  at               the HUMOR of the THREE
                               visi.com            STOOGES!!
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