When is a language considered a scripting language

Question

What makes a language a scripting language  I ve heard some people say  quot when it gets interpreted instead of compiled quot   That would make PHP  for example  a scripting language  Is that the only criterion  Or are there other criteria  See also   What   s the difference between a    script    and an    application

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just to breif

Scripting languages run inside another program. Scripting languages are not compiled. Scripting languages are easy to use and easy to write. but …

Very popular programming languages (Java, C#) run inside a ‘parent’ program – like scripting languages. Scripting languages today are used to build complex software. Computers are so fast these days, and scripting languages are so efficient, that for most business operations, there is no practical speed advantage (that there once was,) with a compiled programming language.

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If it doesn t wouldn t run on the CPU  it s a script to me  If an interpreter needs to run on the CPU below the program  then it s a script and a scripting language   No reason to make it any more complicated than this   Of course  in most  99   of cases  it s clear whether a language is a scripting language  But consider that a VM can emulate the x86 instruction set  for example  Wouldn t this make the x86 bytecode a scripting language when run on a VM  What if someone was to write a compiler that would turn perl code into a native executable  In this case  I wouldn t know what to call the language itself anymore  It d be the output that would matter  not the language   Then again  I m not aware of anything like this having been done  so for now I m still comfortable calling interpreted languages scripting languages

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A scripting language is a programming language that is used to manipulate  customise  and automate the facilities of an existing system  In such systems  useful functionality is already available through a user interface  and the scripting language is a mechanism for exposing that functionality to program control  In this way  the existing system is said to provide a host environment of objects and facilities  which completes the capabilities of the scripting language  A scripting language is intended for use by both professional and non-professional programmers   reference  http   www ecma-international org publications files ECMA-ST Ecma-262 pdf

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I think Mr Roberto Ierusalimschy has a very good answer or the question in  Programming in Lua       However  the distinguishing feature of   interpreted languages is not that they   are not compiled  but that any   compiler is part of the language   runtime and that  therefore  it is   possible  and easy  to execute code   generated on the fly

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A scripting language is a language that  scripts  other things to do stuff  The primary focus isn t primarily building your own apps so much as getting an existing app to act the way you want  e g  JavaScript for browsers  VBA for MS Office

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Scripting languages tend to run within a scripting engine which is part of a larger application  For example  JavaScript runs inside your browsers scripting engine

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Scripting languages were originally thought of as a control mechanisms for applications written in a hard programming language  The compiled programs could not be modified at runtime  so scripting gave people flexibility   Most notably  shell script was automating processes in the OS kernel  traditionally  AppleScript on Macs   a role which more and more passed into Perl s hands  and then out of it into Python lately  I ve seen Scheme  particularly in its Guile implementation  used to declare raytracing scenes  and recently  Lua is very popular as the programming language to script games - to the point that the only hard-coded thing in many new games is the graphics physics engine  while the whole game logic is encoded in Lua  In the same way  JavaScript was thought to script the behaviour of a web browser   The languages emancipated  no-one now thinks about the OS as an application  or thinks about it much at all   and many formerly scripting languages began to be used to write full applications of their own  The name itself became meaningless  and spread to many interpreted languages in use today  regardless of whether they are designed to be interpreted from within another system or not   However   scripting languages  is most definitely not synonymous with  interpreted languages  - for instance  BASIC was interpreted for most of its life  i e  before it lost its acronimicity and became Visual Basic   yet no-one really thinks of it as scripting   UPDATE  Reading material as usual available at Wikipedia

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I ll just go ahead and migrate my answer from the duplicate question    The name  Scripting language  applies to a very specific role  the language which you write commands to send to an existing software application   like a traditional tv or movie  script    For example  once upon a time  HTML web pages were boring   They were always static   Then one day  Netscape thought   Hey  what if we let the browser read and act on little commands in the page    And like that  Javascript was formed   A simple javascript command is the alert   command  which instructs commands the browser  a software app  that is reading the webpage to display an alert   Now  does alert   related  in any way  to the C   or whatever code language that the browser actually uses to display the alert   Of course not   Someone who writes  alert    on an  html page has no understanding of how the browser actually displays the alert   He s just writing a command that the browser will interpret   Let s see the simple javascript code   lt script gt  var x   4 alert x   lt  script gt    These are instructs that are sent to the browser  for the browser to interpret in itself   The programming language that the browser goes through to actually set a variable to 4  and put that in an alert   it is completely unrelated to javascript   We call that last series of commands a  script   which is why it is enclosed in  lt script gt  tags    Just by the definition of  script   in the traditional sense  A series of instructions and commands sent to the actors   Everyone knows that a screenplay  a movie script   for example  is a script   The screenplay  script  is not the actors  or the camera  or the special effects   The screenplay just tells them what to do   Now  what is a scripting language  exactly   There are a lot of programming languages that are like different tools in a toolbox  some languages were designed specifically to be used as scripts   Javasript is an obvious example  there are very few applications of Javascript that do not fall within the realm of scripting   ActionScript  the language for Flash animations  and its derivatives are scripting languages  in that they simply issue commands to the Flash player interpreter   Sure  there are abstractions such as Object-Oriented programming  but all that is simply a means to the end  send commands to the flash player   Python and Ruby are commonly also used as scripting languages   For example  I once worked for a company that used Ruby to script commands to send to a browser that were along the lines of   go to this site  click this link     to do some basic automated testing   I was not a  Software Developer  by any means  at that job   I just wrote scripts that sent commands to the computer to send commands to the browser   Because of their nature  scripting languages are rarely  compiled  -- that is  translated into machine code  and read directly by the computer   Even GUI applications created from Python and Ruby are scripts sent to an API written in C   or C   It tells the C app what to do   There is a line of vagueness  of course   Why can t you say that Machine Language C are scripting languages  because they are scripts that the computer uses to interface with the basic motherboard graphics cards chips   There are some lines we can draw to clarify    When you can write a scripting language and run it without  compiling   it s more of a direct-script sort of thing   For example  you don t need to do anything with a screenplay in order to tell the actors what to do with it   It s already there  used  as-is   For this reason  we will exclude compiled languages from being called scripting languages  even though they can be used for scripting purposes in some occasions  Scripting language implies commands sent to a complex software application  that s the whole reason we write scripts in the first place -- so you don t need to know the complexities of how the software works to send commands to it   So  scripting languages tend to be languages that send  relatively  simple commands to complex software applications   in this case  machine language and assembly code don t cut it

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The definition of  scripting language  is pretty fuzzy   I d base it on the following considerations    Scripting languages don t usually have user-visible compile steps   Typically the user can just run programs in one easy command  Programs in scripting languages are normally passed around in source form  Scripting languages normally have runtimes that are present on a large number of systems  and the runtimes can be installed easily on most systems  Scripting languages tend to be cross-platform and not machine-specific  Scripting languages make it easy to call other programs and interface with the operating system  Scripting languages are usually easily embeddable into larger systems written in more conventional programming languages  Scripting languages are normally designed for ease of programming  and with much less regard for execution speed    If you want fast execution  the usual advice is to code the time-consuming parts in something like C  and either embed the language into C or call C bits from the language     Some of the characteristics I listed above are true of implementations  in which case I m referring to the more common implementations   There have been C interpreters  with  AFAIK  no obvious compile step  but that s not true of most C implementations   You could certainly compile a Perl program to native code  but that s not how it s normally used   Some other characteristics are social in nature   Some of the above criteria overlap somewhat   As I said  the definition is fuzzy

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I would say scripting language is the one heavily manipulating entities it doesn t itself define  For instance  JavaScript manipulates DOM objects provided by the browser  PHP operates enormous library of C-based functions  and so on  Of course not a precise definition  more a way to think if it

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A scripting language is typically    Dynamically typed Interpreted  with very little emphasis on performance  but good portability Requires a lot less boilerplate code  leading to very fast prototyping Is used for small tasks  suitable for writing one single file to run some useful  script     While a non-scripting language is usually   1  Statically typed  2  Compiled  with emphasis on performance  3  Requires more boilerplate code  leading to slower prototyping but more readability and long-term maintainability  4  Used for large projects  adapts to many design patterns  But it s more of a historical difference nowadays  in my opinion  Javascript and Perl were written with small  simple scripts in mind  while C   was written with complex applications in mind  but both can be used either way  And many programming languages  modern and old alike  blur the line anyway  and it was fuzzy in the first place     The sad thing is  I ve known a few developers who loathes what they perceived as  scripting languages   thinking them to be simpler and not as powerful  My opinion is that old cliche - use the right tool for the job

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If it doesn t wouldn t run on the CPU  it s a script to me  If an interpreter needs to run on the CPU below the program  then it s a script and a scripting language   No reason to make it any more complicated than this   Of course  in most  99   of cases  it s clear whether a language is a scripting language  But consider that a VM can emulate the x86 instruction set  for example  Wouldn t this make the x86 bytecode a scripting language when run on a VM  What if someone was to write a compiler that would turn perl code into a native executable  In this case  I wouldn t know what to call the language itself anymore  It d be the output that would matter  not the language   Then again  I m not aware of anything like this having been done  so for now I m still comfortable calling interpreted languages scripting languages

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I think Mr Roberto Ierusalimschy has a very good answer or the question in  Programming in Lua       However  the distinguishing feature of   interpreted languages is not that they   are not compiled  but that any   compiler is part of the language   runtime and that  therefore  it is   possible  and easy  to execute code   generated on the fly

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An important difference is strong typing  versus weak typing   Scripting languages are often weakly typed  making it possible to write small programs more rapidly  For large programs this is a disadvantage  as it inhibits the compiler interpreter to find certain bugs autonomously  making it very hard to refactor code

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Even Java is  a scripting language   because it is implemented in C   Although I hesitate to attempt to improve on mgb s near-perfect answer  the fact is that nothing is better than C for implementation  yet the language is rather low-level and close to the hardware  Pure genius  for sure  but to develop modern SW we want a higher level language that stands on the shoulders of C  so to speak   So  you have Python  Ruby  Perl  and yes  even Java  all implemented in C  People don t insult Java by calling it a scripting language but it is  If you want a powerful  modern  dynamic  reflective  blah blah blah language you probably are running something like Ruby that is either interpreted directly in C or compiled down to something that is interpreted JIT compiled  by some C program   The other distinction people make is to call the dynamically-typed languages  scripting languages

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Your criteria sounds about right  but is always a bit fuzzy  For instance  Java is both compiled  to bytecode  and then interpreted  by the JVM   Yet it is normally not categorized as a scripting language    This might be because Java is statically typed  Whereas JavaScript  Ruby  Python  Perl  etc  are not  all of which are often called scripting languages

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I prefer that people not use the term  scripting language  as I think that it diminishes the effort   Take a language like Perl  often called  scripting language     Perl is a programming language  Perl is compiled like Java and C    It s just compiled a lot faster  Perl has objects and namespaces and closures  Perl has IDEs and debuggers and profilers  Perl has training and support and community  Perl is not just web  Perl is not just sysadmin  Perl is not just the duct tape of the Internet     Why do we even need to distinguish between a language like Java that is compiled and Ruby that isn t   What s the value in labeling   For more on this  see http   xoa petdance com Stop saying script

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Also  you may want to check out this podcast on scripting languages

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The most commonly know essay written on the topic by a note-worthy source I know of is called Ousterhout s dichotomy  It is highly criticized as being fairly arbitrary and often jokingly refereed to as Ousterhout s false dichotomy  That being said in a discussion about the topic it deserves a citation   I personally agree that this is a false dichotomy and I wouldn t trust anyone answering this question that proposes to have firm properties as to what defines a scripting language  Comments like  a scripting language must be dynamically typed  are false and comments like  scripting languages must be interpreted  don t even make sense because contrary to popular belief  compilation vs  interpretation is not a property of the language at all   There are lots of properties that people have mentioned above as roughly matching scripting languages  thankfully most of them properly explaining that this term has no rigorous definition  So I won t duplicate my ideas of what they are here  For my experience people consider a language a scripting language if they can easily write some quick throwaway programs in them without writing much boiler plate  I m mostly answering to give you the citation to Ousterhout which I don t see here

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As someone else noted  there s no such thing as a compiled or interpreted language  since any language can be either compiled or interpreted   But languages which have been traditionally interpreted rather than compiled  Python  Perl  Ruby  PHP  JavaScript  Lua  also are the ones that people tend to call scripting languages   So it s relatively reasonable to say that a scripting language is one that is commonly interpreted rather than compiled   The other characteristics which scripting languages have in common are related to the fact that they are interpreted   Scripting languages are really a subset of programming languages  I don t think most people would claim that any of the languages I mentioned earlier aren t also programming languages

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Traditionally  when talking about the difference about scripting versus programming  scripts are interpreted and programs are compiled  A language can be executed in different ways - interpreted or compiled  to bytecode or machine code   This does not make a language one or another   In some eyes  the way you use a language makes it a scripting language  for example  game developers who develop mainly in C   will script the objects in Lua   Again  the lines are blurred - a language can be used for a programming by one person and the same language can be used for scripting language by another   This is from the wikipedia article about scripting languages      A scripting language  script language or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more software applications   Scripts  are distinct from the core code of the application  as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the end-user   Scripts are often interpreted from source code or bytecode  whereas the applications they control are traditionally compiled  to native machine code  Scripting languages are nearly always embedded in the applications they control    You will notice the use of  usually    often    traditionally  and  nearly always  - these all tell you that there is no set of distinct attributes that make a specific language a  scripting language

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For a slightly different take on the question  A scripting language is a programming language but a programming language is not necessarily a scripting language  A scripting language is used to control or script a system  That system could be an operating system where the scripting language would be bash  The system could be a web server with PHP the scripting language  Scripting languages are designed to fill a specific niche  they are domain specific languages  Interactive systems have interpreted scripting languages giving rise to the notion that scripting languages are interpreted  however  this is a consequence of the system and not the scripting language itself

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Scripting languages are programming languages where the programs are typically delivered to end users in a readable textual form and where there is a program that can apparently execute that program directly   The program may well compile the script internally  that s not relevant here because it is not visible to the user    It s relatively common for scripting languages to be able to support an interactive session where users can just type in their program and have it execute immediately  This is because this is a trivial extension of the essential requirement from the first paragraph  the main extra requirement is the addition of a mechanism to figure out when a typed-in statement is complete so that it can be sent to the execution engine

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There s a lot of possible answers to this   First  it s not really a question of the difference between a scripting language and a programming language  because a scripting language is a programming language  It s more a question of what traits make some programming language a scripting language while another programming language isn t a scripting language   Second  it s really hard to say what a XYZ language is  whether that XYZ be  scripting    functional programming    object-oriented programming  or what have you  The definition of what  functional programming  is  is pretty clear  but nobody knows what a  functional programming language  is   Functional programming or object-oriented programming are programming styles  you can write in a functional style or an object-oriented style in pretty much any language  For example  the Linux Virtual File System Switch and the Linux Driver Model are heavily object-oriented despite written in C  whereas a lot of Java or C  code you see on the web is very procedural and not object-oriented at all  OTOH  I have seen some heavily functional Java code   So  if functional programming and object-oriented programming are merely styles that can be done in any language  then how do you define an  object-oriented programming language   You could say that an object-oriented programming language is a language that allows object-oriented programming  But that s not much of a definition  all languages allow object-oriented programming  therefore all languages are object-oriented  So  you say  well a language is object-oriented  if it forces you to programming in an object-oriented style  But that s not much of a definition  either  all languages allow functional programming  therefore no language is object-oriented   So  for me  I have found the following definition      A language is a scripting language  object-oriented language   functional language  if it both         facilitates scripting  object-oriented programming   functional programming   i e  it not only allows it but makes it easy and natural and contains features that help with it  AND   encourages and guides you towards scripting  object-oriented programming   functional programming        So  after five paragraphs  I have arrived at   a scripting language is a language for scripting   What a great definition  NOT   Obviously  we now need to look at the definition of  scripting    This is where the third problem comes in  whereas the term  functional programming  is well-defined and it s only the term  functional programming language  that is problematic  unfortunately with scripting  both the term  scripting  and the term  scripting language  are ill-defined   Well  firstly scripting is programming  It s just a special kind of programming  IOW  every script is a program  but not every program is a script  the set of all scripts is a proper subset of the set of all programs   In my personal opinion  the thing that makes scripting scripting and distinguishes it from other kinds of programming  is that  hellip      Scripts largely manipulate objects that         were not created by the script    have a lifetime independent of the script and   live outside the domain of the script          Also  the datatypes and algorithms used are generally not defined by the script but by the outside environment    Think about a shell script  shell scripts usually manipulate files  directories and processes  The majority of files  directories and processes on your system were probably not created by the currently running script  And they don t vanish when the script exits  their lifetime is completely independent of the script  And they aren t really part of the script  either  they are a part of the system  You didn t start your script by writing File and Directory classes  those datatypes are none of your concern  you just assume they are there  and you don t even know  nor do you need to know  how they work  And you don t implement your own algorithms  either  e g  for directory traversal you just use find instead of implementing your own breadth-first-search   In short  a script attaches itself to a larger system that exists independently of the script  manipulates some small part of the system and then exits   That larger system can be the operating system in case of a shell script  the browser DOM in case of a browser script  a game  e g  World of Warcraft with Lua or Second Life with the Linden Scripting Language   an application  e g  the AutoLisp language for AutoCAD or Excel Word Office macros   a web server  a pack of robots or something else entirely   Note that the scripting aspect is completely orthogonal to all the other aspects of programming languages  a scripting language can be strongly or weakly typed  strictly or loosely typed  statically or dynamically typed  nominally  structurally or duck typed  heck it can even be untyped  It can be imperative or functional  object-oriented  procedural or functional  strict or lazy  Its implementations can be interpreted  compiled or mixed   For example  Mondrian is a strictly strongly statically typed lazy functional scripting language with a compiled implementation   However  all of this is moot  because the way the term scripting language is really used in the real world  has nothing to do with any of the above  It is most often used simply as an insult  and the definition is rather simple  even simplistic         real programming language  my programming language   scripting language  your programming language      This seems to be the way that the term is most often used

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Simple  When I use it  it s a modern dynamic language  when you use it  it s merely a scripting language

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A scripting language is a language that configures or extends an existing program  A Scripting Language is a Programming language

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In short Scripting languages have the following properties    Interpreter based  Easy syntax Like access files of directory is very easy in python as compare to java  Generally used to write less line of codes  Convenient for writing automation codes   Very high level languages    Eg  Javascript python VBA

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My definition would be a language that is typically distributed as source rather than as a binary

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Paraphrasing Robert Sebesta in Concepts of Programming Languages      A scripting language is used by putting a list of commands  called a script  in a file to be executed  The first of these languages  named sh  for shell   began as a small collection of commands that were interpreted as calls to system sub-programs that performed utility funcions  such as file management and simple file filtering  To this basis were added variables  control flow statemens  functions  and various other capabilities  and the result is a complete programming language    And then you have examples like AWK  Tcl Tk  Perl  which says that initially was a combination between sh and AWK  but it became so powerful that he considers it an  odd but full-fledged programming language    Other examples include CGI and JavaScript

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One division is    scripting   dynamically interpreted normal   compiled    A dynamically interpreted language is interpreted at runtime whereas a compiled language is compiled before execution   I should add that as J  rg has pointed out  the interpreted   compiled distinction is not a feature of the language  but of the execution engine   You might also be interested in this explanation of Type system  which is related and focuses more on the language aspect  instead of the execution engine  Most scripting languages are dynamically typed  whereas  normal  languages are mostly statically typed   In general the division of statically vs dynamically typed languages is better defined and has more implications on the usability of the language

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It s like porn  you know it when you see it  The only possible definition of a scripting language is   A language which is described as a scripting language    A bit circular  isn t it   By the way  I m not joking    Basically  there is nothing that makes a language a scripting language except that it is called such  especially by its creators  The major set of modern scripting languages is PHP  Perl  JavaScript  Python  Ruby and Lua  Tcl is the first major modern scripting language  it wasn t the first scripting language though  I forget what it is  but I was surprised to learn that it predated Tcl    I describe features of major scripting languages in my paper    A Practical Solution for Scripting Language Compilers  Paul Biggar  Edsko de Vries and David Gregg  SAC  09  ACM Symposium on Applied Computing  2009    March 2009    Most are dynamically typed and interpreted  and most have no defined semantics outside of their reference implementation  However  even if their major implementation becomes compiled or JITed  that doesn t change the  nature  of the language   They only remaining question is how can you tell if a new language is a scripting language  Well  if it s called a scripting language  it is one  So Factor is a scripting language  or at least was when that was written   but  say  Java is not

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I see a scripting language as anything not requiring an overt heavy-weight feeling  compile  step  The main feature from a programmers standpoint is  you edit code and run it right away   Thus I would regard JavaScript and PHP as scripting languages  whereas ActionScript 3 Flex is not really

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I always looked at scripting languages as a means to communicate with some sort of application or program  In contrast  a language which is compiled actually creates the program itself    Now keep in mind that a scripting language usually adds on to or modifies the program that was initially created with a language that was compiled  Thus  it can certainly be part of the larger picture but the initial binaries are first created with a language that is compiled   So I could create a scripting language which lets users perform various actions or customize my program  My program would interpret the scripted code and in turn call some kind of function  This is just a basic example  It just gives you a way to dynamically call routines within the program   My program would have to parse the scripted code  you could refer to these as commands  and execute whatever action was intended in real time   I see this question was already answered several times but I thought I would add my way of looking at things into the mix  Granted  some folks may disagree with this answer but this way of thinking has always helped me

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A scripting language is a language that is interpreted every time the script is run  it implies having a interpreter and most are very human readable  to be useful a scripting language is easy to learn and use    Every compilable language can be made into a script language and vice versa it all depends on implementing a interpreter or a compiler  as an example C   has an interpreter so it can be called a script language if used so  not very practical in general as C   is a very complex language   one of the most useful script languages at present is Python     So to answer your question the definition is on the use of a interpreter to run quick and easy scripted programs  to address simple tasks or prototype applications the most powerful use one can make of script languages is to include the possibility for every use to extend a compiled application

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First point  a programming language isn t a  scripting language  or a something else  It can be a  scripting language  and something else   Second point  the implementer of the language will tell you if it s a scripting language   Your question should read  In what implementations would a programming language be considered a scripting language    not  What is the difference between a scripting language and a programming language    There is no between   Yet  I will consider a language a scripting language if it is used to provide some type of middle ware  For example  I would consider most implementations of JavaScript a scripting language  If JavaScript were run in the OS  not the browser  then it would not be a scripting language  If PHP runs inside of Apache  it s a scripting language  If it s run from the command line  it s not

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All scripting languages are programming languages  So strictly speaking  there is no difference   The term doesn t refer to any fundamental properties of the language  it refers to the typical use of the language  If the typical use is to write short programs that mainly do calls to pre-existing code  and some simple processing on the results   that is  if the typical use is to write scripts  then it is a scripting language

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My friend and I just had this argument  What is the difference between a programming language and a scripting language   A popular argument is that programming languages are compiled and scripting languages are interpreted - However I believe this argument to be completely false   why    Chakra  amp  V8  Microsoft s and Google s JavaScript engines  compile code before execution QBasic is interpreted - does this make Qbasic a  scripting  language    On that basis  this is my argument for the difference between a programming language and a scripting language   A programming language runs at the machine level and has access to the machine itself  memory  graphics  sound etc    A scripting language is sand boxed and only has access to objects exposed to the sand box  It has no direct access to the underlying machine

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In My Opinion  I would say that dynamically interpreted languages such as PHP  Ruby  etc    are still  normal  langauges  I would say that examples of  scripting  languages are things like bash  or ksh or tcsh or whatever  or sqlplus  These languages are often used to string together existing programs on a system into a series of coherent and related commands  such as    copy A txt to  tmp work  run the nightly cleanup process on the database server log the results and send them to the sysdamin   So I d say the difference  for me  anyway  is more in how you use the language  Languages like PHP  Perl  Ruby could be used as  scripting languages   but I usually see them used as  normal languages   except Perl which seems to go both ways

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A script is a relatively small program  A system is a relatively large program  or a collection of relatively large programs   Some programming languages are designed with features that the language designer and the programming community consider to be useful when writing relatively small programs  These programming languages are known as scripting languages  e g  PHP   Similarly  other programming languages are designed with features that the language designer and the programming community consider to be useful when writing relatively large programs  These programming languages are known as systems languages  e g  Java   Now  small and large programs can be written in any language  A small Java program is a script  For example  a Java  Hello World  program is a script  not a system  A large program  or collection of programs  written in PHP is a system  For example  Facebook  written in PHP  is a system  not a script   Considering a single language feature as a  litmus test  for deciding whether the language is best suited for scripting or systems programming is questionable  For example  scripts may be compiled to byte code or machine code  or they may be executed by direct abstract syntax tree  AST  interpretation   So  a language is a scripting language if it is typically used to write scripts  A scripting language might be used to write systems  but such applications are likely to be considered dubious

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Scripting language  is one of those fuzzy concepts which can mean many things  Usually it refers to the fact that there exists a one step process taking you from the source code to execution    For example in Perl you do  perl my source pl  Given the above criteria PHP is a scripting language  even though you can have a  compilation  process for example when using the Zend Encoder to  protect  the source code    PS  Often  but not always  scripting languages are interpreted  Also often  but again  not always  scripting languages are dynamically typed

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May I suggest that scripting languages has been a term lots of people are moving away from  I d say it mostly boils down to compiled languages and dynamic languages nowadays   I mean you can t really say something like Python  or Ruby are  scripting  languages in this day and age  you even have stuff like IronPython and JIT-your-favorite-language  the difference has been blurred even more    To be honest  personally I don t feel PHP is a scripting language anymore  I wouldn t expect people to like categorize PHP differently from say Java on their resume

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A script is what you give the actors    A program is what you give the   audience   -- Larry Wall   I really don t think there s much of a difference any more   The so-called  scripting  languages are often compiled -- just very quickly  and at runtime   And some of the  programming  languages are are further compiled at runtime as well  think of JIT  and the first stage of  compiling  is syntax checking and resource resolution   Don t get hung up on it  it s really not important

[programming-languages] When is a language considered a scripting language?

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