Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL?

tellab5!odgate!dbk@uunet.UU.NET (Dan Keith) writes:
|> I'm embroiled in a debate with my colleagues over the
|> difference between the term "programming language" and the
|> term "scripting language".


Lutz Prechelt <prechelt@ira.uka.de>, writes:
> I think at least in the Unix world the most-used criterion is
> whether the language is being compiled or not:
>
> Everything that is interpreted may be called a 'script'.
>
> I would say that every language which is (almost?) ALWAYS
> interpreted instead of compiled can be called a scripting
> language.


- Item First -


Err, I suspect some of the Worshippers of APL would be very surprised
to hear their religion besmirched as a mere 'scripting language'. :)
APL is generally interpreted, and it's only been with the development
of powerful desktop machines has compiling of APL been practical.


- Item Second -


If you have an IBM PC, get a copy of the program Telemate - I use it
*exclusively* for all of my terminal communications. I spent four
years with my last comm program because nothing else would work for
me until Telemate came along. While the program gave 30 days to make
a decision about paying the shareware price, I sent my payment in after
one week; I was hooked.


The program has a "script language" but that's an understatement; it
is extensible so you can add new words to the command list; has string
and arithmetic and looping capability, and the comm program doesn't
execute the scripts directly, it compiles them into tokens so the
program doesn't interpret the script, it interprets the tokens. As a
scripting facility for telecommunications it's extremely powerful, in
fact, the scripting capability for telemate could stand by itself as
a full programming language.




- Item Last -


I was doing programming using a terminal monitor on a mainframe system
using DOS/VSE with Condor. A little used capability of the system was
a programming language named "ECHO". If you created a text file using
the language, issuing that file name as a command caused the text in
that file to be interpreted as a program in the ECHO language. It was
useful for manipulating data files and the 3270 Terminals that were
attached to the system. (Several games were present on the system,
written using the Echo language). The programs were always interpreted,
*just like Basic* and only the source text is kept.
--
Paul Robinson - TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM
--

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