On Tue, 17 May 2005 10:33, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > On Tue, 17 May 2005 01:09, Martin B�hr wrote: > > On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 03:20:24PM +1200, John Carter wrote: > > > With scripting languages real life problems are typically about > > > "glueing" together other existing apps. > > > > yes and no. > > for that to hold true, maybe we need to split the definitions of > > scripting languages: > > > > glue: shell, perl, ruby > > non-glue: php, python, pike > > Whether a language is glue, or non-glue, is very subjective, > ( I believe a pretty full set of accounting ledgers has been written as a > set of shell scripts ) but I'd place ruby in the non-glue category. > It is quite definitely a full language in it own right.
There's a fairly full relational database system - rdb, not the DEC one - written in sh - the University Library's Physical Science Library has a copy of the book on it. > > http://www.ruby-lang.org > > > i am not actually sure about php here. it is used to glue things > > together, but not in the same way as the above glue languages. > > same with python. > > > > pike otoh is most certainly not a glue but an application language. > > you could call pike a network glue language. socket handling is one of > > pikes strenght. (a webserver in less than a dozend lines of code? :-) Talking about applications and glue languages, there is a web server written in awk floating around the net somewhere. I don't know just how many web servers are running on it I guess it's about 0, but it makes the point quite well. awk is nothing if not a glue language. And as for application-specific languages, there's also a web server written in Postscript. Postscript's a Forth-style application specific - ie, no "variables" as such, everything goes on and off the stack - which is declared as such - and it's got this interesting syntax ... > > > > the difference here is mostly that reading stdout from another > > application is trivial in glue languages, and reading a socket is > > harder, while in pike it is the other way around because reading from > > other apps is not done as often. > > -- > C. S. Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
