>what's the difference between a "programming language" and a "scripting language"<br>The truth is with the newest developments, scripting is of course gaining a new meaning. By old "meanings" a scripting lang would have usually characteristics like:<br>
- being interpreted from source code (traditional langs are compiled as you know)<br>- being separate components from main application and so forth (but this has gradually changed nowadays!)<br><br>One does not usually call "shell scripting" "shell programming", simply because its interpreted scritps (like so many other langs), but OF COURSE when you're scripting your programming... :) It's an old "word/meaning" that induces some ambiguity.. true.<br>
<br>An interesting description could be borrowed Ousterhout from where he states:<br>"they are intended primarily for plugging together components", but then again... they (scripting langs) have evolved so largely that they have surpassed that in many ways. But he was saying this in 98[1]... it is funny to see how it all evolved. There's another usual name for this "glue code" that some of my oldest teachers used to say in my first years of college, guess it traces back to this concept that "scripting langs" are just a part of the whole app. Nowadays you can pretty much do a lot with them... a lot...<br>
<br>[1] <a href="http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/scripting.html">http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/scripting.html</a><br><br>>ECMA is a rather large standards organisation and they do lots of
things.<br>Indeed, but ECMA script is an ISO for defining languages too, I was talking about that. <br><br>>Sun had attempted to get an ECMA JAVA standard done, but they
changed their mind. There's also >an ECMA standard for C# and for the
C#-compatible version of C++, etc.<br>True true, there's a lot of ecma compliant stuff out there, but still too esoteric for me because apart from AS and js haven't really learned any of them... <br><br>Sorry to mingle this sub-topic in such as interesting thread (kudos on the webpd), I'll shut myself for now... :)<br>
<br>best regards,<br>Pedro<br>-- <br>Pedro Lopes<br>contacto: <a href="mailto:jazz@radiozero.pt">jazz@radiozero.pt</a><br>website: <a href="http://web.ist.utl.pt/Pedro.Lopes">http://web.ist.utl.pt/Pedro.Lopes</a> <br>