Quoth Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: | Lasse Vågsæther Karlsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ... |> I think that at one time, scripting languages was something that lived |> within other programs, like Office, and couldn't be used by themselves |> without running it inside that program, and as thus was a way to add |> minor functions and things to that program. | | That's certainly one kind of scripting language. But I don't think | it's ever been the only kind - shells have always been stand-alone | applications. What they have in common with your definition is that | both types of languages are used to capture user actions for later | repetition. And that's what makes a scripting language: it's a | language in which one writes "scripts" that describe actions - | normally taken by a user - so that a series of them can be performed | automatically.
I don't think the shell is any exception - I think it's reasonable to see it as a control+UI language embedded in the UNIX operating system. It wouldn't really be a very useful stand-alone application on a computer platform without the same basic properties. Donn Cave, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list