On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 11:07:30AM -0500, David Nicol wrote: > >On May 17, 2007, at 4:08 PM, Andy Lester wrote: > >> I'm trying hard to get people to stop saying "script" when > >> referring to their Perl programs. I'd prefer that we not use it > >> anywhere at all. > > outside of computers, "script" is a better term for the carefully > tuned deliverables that software engineer produce than is > "program." Your basic mundane citizen considers a "program" > a list of things that will occur in an evening, or a document > they are handed when they occasionally get out to the opera, > while "script" is something mysterious, yet cruciual for > the production of television shows, produced by professionals > who are legendary for failing to get the girl.
It might be different elsewhere, but in the UK a program refers to a computer program and a programme is something you watch on TV or get handed at the theatre or a concert. A script can have the assumption of a 4GL, where it ties together other things, such as a shell script, but it is also used to define a simple wrapper that acts as a startup script to prepare the environment before starting up an application. .pl files seem to fall into all three categories of shell script, startup script and program, depending upon their content. In fact I've seen some amazing bash script programs before now. I think it's more important to say you write Perl. In my experience, the business world doesn't distinguish between scripts and applications, they talk about the languages they use. It's only holy language wars that seem to make an issue of it. Barbie. -- Birmingham Perl Mongers - http://birmingham.pm.org Miss Barbell Productions - http://www.missbarbell.co.uk
