Script (computing)

A scripting or script language is a programming language that supports scripts; programs written for a special run-time environment that automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Scripting languages are often interpreted (rather than compiled). Primitives are usually the elementary tasks or API calls, and the language allows them to be combined into more complex programs. Environments that can be automated through scripting include software applications, web pages within a web browser, the shells of operating systems (OS), embedded systems, as well as numerous games. A scripting language can be viewed as a domain-specific language for a particular environment; in the case of scripting an application, this is also known as an extension language. Scripting languages are also sometimes referred to as very high-level programming languages, as they operate at a high level of abstraction, or as control languages, particularly for job control languages on mainframes.

The term "scripting language" is also used loosely to refer to dynamic high-level general-purpose languages, such as Perl,Tcl, and Python, with the term "script" often used for small programs (up to a few thousand lines of code) in such languages, or in domain-specific languages such as the text-processing languages sed and AWK. Some of these languages were originally developed for use within a particular environment, and later developed into portable domain-specific or general-purpose languages. Conversely, many general-purpose languages have dialects that are used as scripting languages. This article discusses scripting languages in the narrow sense of languages for a specific environment.

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