Scripting language

A scripting or script language is a programming language for a special run-time environment that automates the execution of tasks; the tasks could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Scripting languages are often interpreted (rather than compiled).Typical scripting languages are intended to be very fast to learn and write in, either as short source code files or interactively in a read–eval–print loop (REPL, language shell). This generally implies relatively simple syntax and semantics; typically a 'script' (code written in the scripting language) is executed from start to finish, as a 'script', with no explicit entry point.Early mainframe computers (in the 1950s) were non-interactive, instead using batch processing. IBM's Job Control Language (JCL) is the archetype of languages used to control batch processing.Scripting is often contrasted with system programming, as in Ousterhout's dichotomy or 'programming in the large and programming in the small'. In this view, scripting is particularly glue code, connecting software components, and a language specialized for this purpose is a glue language. Pipelines and shell scripting are archetypal examples of glue languages, and Perl was initially developed to fill this same role. Web development can be considered a use of glue languages, interfacing between a database and web server. But if a substantial amount of logic is written in script, it is better characterized as simply another software component, not 'glue'.