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, which is 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.
The name "script" is derived from the written script of the
performing arts, in which dialogue is set down to be spoken by human actors. Early script languages were often called
batch languages or
job control languages. Such early scripting languages were created to shorten the traditional edit-
compile-
link-run process.
An example many people have used is a web browser like
Firefox. Firefox is written in
C/
C++ and can be controlled by
JavaScript.
Historical overview
The first interactive
shells were developed in the 1960s to enable remote operation of the first
time-sharing systems, and these generated a demand for scripting, to relieve the human operator of the tedium of re-entering sequences of commands at a
computer terminal keyboard, so from there were developed simple macro commands, files containing sequences of commands, which eventually developed into
shell scripts. In a parallel development, the larger and more complex applications developed embedded scripting facilities, at first very rudimentary, to facilitate
batch mode operation where a human operator would not be present to guide the program. Thus part of the program was devoted to interpreting instructions written by the user in a (usually quite specialized) instruction language — a computer program within a computer program.
Historically, there was a clear distinction between "real" high speed programs written in languages such as C, and simple, slow scripts written in languages such as Bourne Shell or Awk. But as technology improved, the performance differences shrank and interpreted languages like Java, Lisp, Perl and Python emerged and gained in popularity to the point where they are considered general-purpose programming languages and not just languages that "drive" an interpreter.
Languages such as
Tcl and
Lua, were specifically designed as general purpose scripting languages that could be embedded in any application or used on their own. Other systems such as
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) provided strong integration with the automation facilities of an underlying system. Embedding of such general purpose scripting languages instead of developing a new language for each application also had obvious benefits, relieving the application developer of the need to code a language translator from scratch and allowing the user to apply skills learned elsewhere.
The
Common Gateway Interface allowed scripting languages to control
web servers, thus communicate over the web. Scripting languages that made use of CGI early in the evolution of the Web include
Perl,
ASP, and
PHP.
Some software incorporates several different scripting languages. Modern
web browsers typically provide a language for writing extensions to the browser itself, and several standard embedded languages for controlling the browser, including
ECMAScript (more commonly known as
JavaScript),
CSS, and
HTML.
Types of scripting languages
Job control languages and shells
A major class of scripting languages has grown out of the automation of job control, which relates to starting and controlling the behavior of system programs. (In this sense, one might think of shells as being descendants of IBM's JCL, or
Job Control Language, which was used for exactly this purpose.) Many of these languages' interpreters double as
command-line interpreters such as the
Unix shell or the MS-DOS
COMMAND.COM. Others, such as
AppleScript offer the use of English-like commands to build scripts. This combined with
Mac OS X's
Cocoa frameworks allows user to build entire applications using
AppleScript &
Cocoa objects.
GUI Scripting
With the advent of
graphical user interfaces came a specialized kind of scripting language for controlling a computer. These languages interact with the same graphic windows, menus, buttons, and so on that a system generates. They do this by simulating the actions of a human user. These languages are typically used to automate user actions or configure a standard state. Such languages are also called "
macros" when control is through simulated key presses or mouse clicks.
These languages could in principle be used to control any application running on a GUI-based computer; but, in practice, the support for such languages typically depends on the application and
operating system. There are a few exceptions to this limitation. Some GUI scripting languages are based on recognizing graphical objects from their display screen
pixels. These GUI scripting languages do not depend on support from the operating system, or application.
Application-specific languages
Many large application programs include an idiomatic scripting language tailored to the needs of the application user. Likewise, many
computer game systems use a custom scripting language to express the programmed actions of
non-player characters and the game environment. Languages of this sort are designed for a single application; and, while they may superficially resemble a specific general-purpose language (e.g.
QuakeC, modeled after C), they have custom features that distinguish them.
Emacs Lisp, while a fully formed and capable dialect of
Lisp, contains many special features that make it most useful for extending the editing functions of Emacs. An application-specific scripting language can be viewed as a
domain-specific programming language specialized to a single application.
Web browsers
Web browsers are applications for displaying web pages. A host of special-purpose languages has developed to control their operation. These include
JavaScript, a scripting language superficially resembling
Java;
VBScript by
Microsoft, which only works in
Internet Explorer;
XUL by the
Mozilla project, which only works in
Firefox; and
XSLT, a presentation language that transforms XML content into a new form. Techniques involving the combination of XML and JavaScript scripting to improve the user's impression of responsiveness have become significant enough to acquire a name:
AJAX.
Web servers
On the server side of the HTTP link,
application servers and other dynamic content servers such as
Web content management systems provide content through a large variety of techniques and technologies typified by the scripting approach. Particularly prominent in this area are
PHP,
JSP and
ASP, but other developments such as
Ruby on Rails have carved out a niche.
Text processing languages
The processing of text-based records is one of the oldest uses of scripting languages. Scripts written for the
Unix tools
AWK,
sed, and
grep automate tasks that involve text-based configuration and log files. Of high importance here is the
regular expression, a language developed for the formal description of the lexical structure of text, and used by all of these tools.
Perl was originally designed to overcome limitations of these tools and has grown to be one of the most widespread general purpose languages.
General-purpose dynamic languages
Some languages, such as Perl, began as scripting languages but were developed into programming languages suitable for broader purposes. Other similar languages – frequently interpreted, memory-managed, or
dynamic – have been described as "scripting languages" for these similarities, even if they are more commonly used for applications programming. They are usually
not called "scripting languages" by their own users.
Extension/embeddable languages
A number of languages have been designed for the purpose of replacing application-specific scripting languages by being embeddable in application programs. The application programmer (working in C or another systems language) includes "hooks" where the scripting language can control the application. These languages serve the same purpose as application-specific extension languages but with the advantage of allowing some transfer of skills from application to application.
JavaScript began as and primarily still is a language for scripting inside
web browsers; however, the standardization of the language as
ECMAScript has made it popular as a general purpose embeddable language. In particular, the
Mozilla implementation
SpiderMonkey is embedded in several environments such as the
Yahoo! Widget Engine. Other applications embedding ECMAScript implementations include the
Adobe products
Adobe Flash ([[A
Market analysis
The most popular scripting language, as of 2008, is
JavaScript. The second most popular is
PHP.
Perl is the third most popular scripting language, but in
North America it enjoys significantly more popularity.
See also
