What is a scripting language?

by Clay Moore on March 3, 2010

in Computer Language,Novice Users

This is a topic suggested by a reader. The reader wants to know what is a scripting language? I will provide an answer after the break.

A scripting language is a language for use in controlling one or more applications on a computer. AppleScript is a scripting language for Mac OSX. It is designed to allow a user to write scripts that control application on a Macintosh computer. Javascript is a language for controlling a web browser.

The hallmark of most scripting languages is that they are written in text form and are run from that text form, without a compile step. That makes scripting languages quick to develop, but poor performers compared to compiled languages. Usually complex programs have some kind of scripting language to allow the end user to automates some their tasks.

The Macintosh computer is one computer that has a system wide scripting language in AppleScript. Developers expose some of their programs to the AppleScript interpreter which allows AppleScript to call on the functions of a program. There is no similar scripting language, unless you consider batch files to be a type of scripting language.

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