Innovative features

of
Scripting Languages:-

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 Scripting Languages
• Scripting is the action of writing scripts using a scripting language
• scripting languages is just another kind of programming
• The use of the word ‘script’ in a computing used for the sequence of commands
that were to be read from a file and follow in sequence.
• This style of programming frequently uses a scripting language to interconnect ‘off
the shelf ‘ components that are themselves written in conventional language.
• Applications built in this way are called ‘glue applications’ ,and the language is
called a ‘glue language

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 Types of Scripting Languages
• Server-side Scripting Language
• Can use huge resources of the server
• Complete all processing in the server and send plain pages to the client
• Reduces client-side computation overhead
• Client-side Scripting Language
• Does not involve server processing
• Complete application is downloaded to the client browser
• Client browser executes it locally
• Are normally used to add functionality to web pages e.g. different menu styles, graphic displays
or dynamic advertisements

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 Different Scripting Languages

• Active Server Pages (ASP)

• Server side scripting language
• Developed by Microsoft
• Good at connecting to Microsoft databases
• Runs only on Microsoft servers
• Perl
• Old UNIX language
• Found on all Windows and Linux servers
• Can handle text manipulation tasks
• Excellent web scripting language

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 Different Scripting Languages
• PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor)
• Especially good at connecting to MySQL
• Very popular language
• Runs on UNIX and Windows
• HTML-embedded scripting language
• Syntax looks like C, JAVA, and PERL
• Generate Dynamic content and good User Interface
• Server side execution
• JSP (Java Server Pages)
• Developed by Sun
• Uses Java
• Provide server-specific framework like Microsoft’s ASP

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 Different Scripting Languages

● CGI (Common Gateway Interface)

○ Server-side solution
○ Needs to launch separate instance of application for each web request
○ Allows direct interaction with users
● ASP.NET
○ Server-side technology to create faster, reliable and dynamic web pages
○ Supports .NET framework languages (C#, VB.NET, JScript.NET)
○ Provides flexibility to designers and developers to work separately
 Different Scripting Languages

● VBScript
○ Microsoft’s scripting language

○ Client side Scripting language

○ Very easy to learn

○ Includes the functionality of Visual Basic

● JavaScript
○ Client-side Scripting language

○ Easy to use programming language

○ Enhance dynamics and interactive features of a web page

○ Allows to perform calculation, write interactive games, add special effects, customize graphic selections, create security passwords
 Glue Languages

• A glue language is a programming language (usually an interpreted

scripting language) that is designed or suited for writing glue code –
code to connect software components
• General-purpose scripting languages like Perl and Python are
sometimes called glue languages, because they were originally
designed to “glue” existing programs together to build a larger
system

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 Scripting Language Evolution
• Modern scripting languages have two principal sets of ancestors.
• command interpreters or “shells” and “terminal” (command-line)
• IBM’s JCL, MS-DOS command interpreter, Unix sh and csh
• various tools for text processing and report generation
• IBM’s RPG, and Unix’s sed and awk.
• From these evolved
• Rexx, IBM’s “Restructured Extended Executor,” which dates from 1979
• Perl, originally devised by Larry Wall in the late 1980s, and now the most
widelyused general purpose scripting language.
• Other general purpose scripting languages include Tcl (“tickle”), Python,
Ruby, VBScript (for Windows) and AppleScript (for the Mac)
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 Scripting Language Evolution
• Scripting on Microsoft platforms
• Most of the Microsoft scripting applications are based on VBScript
• Microsoft has also developed a very general scripting interface (Windows
Script) that is implemented uniformly by the operating system, the web
server, and the Internet Explorer browser
• A Windows Script implementation of JScript, the company’s version of
JavaScript, comes pre-installed on Windows machines
• Many other Microsoft applications use VBScript as an extension language
• Given Microsoft’s share of the desktop computing market, VBScript is one
of the most widely used scripting languages
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 Characteristics of scripting languages:
1. both batch and interactive use
2. economy of expression
3. lack of declarations; simple scoping rules
4. flexible dynamic typing
5. easy access to other programs
6. sophisticated pattern matching and string manipulation
7. high level data types
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1.Both batch and interactive use
- While a few languages (e.g. Perl) have a compiler that requires the entire
source program, almost all scripting languages either compile or interpret line by
line.
2.Economy of expression
• Two variants: some make heavy use of punctuation and short identifiers
(like Perl), while others emphasize “English-like” functionality
• Either way, things get shorter. Java versus Python (or Ruby or Perl):
class Hello {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(“Hello, world!”);
}
print “Hello, world!\n”

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• Lack of declarations; simple scoping rules.
• While the rules vary, they are generally fairly simple and additional
syntax is necessary to alter them.
• In Perl, everything is of global scope by default, but optional parameters can
limit the scope to local
• In PHP, everything is local by default, and any global variables must be explicitly
imported.
• In Python, everything is local to the block in which the assignment appears, and
special syntax is required to assign a variable in a surrounding scope.

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■ Flexible dynamic typing
– In PHP, Python and Ruby, the type of a variable is only checked right before use
– In Perl, Rexx, or Tcl, things are even more dynamic:
$a = “4”
print $a . 3 . “\n”
print $a + 3 . “\n”
Outputs the following:
43
7

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■ Easy access to other programs
– While all languages provide support for OS functionality, scripting languages
generally provide amazing and much more fundamental built-in support.
– Examples include directory and file manipulation, I/O modules, sockets, database
access, password and authentication support, and network commmunications.
■ Sophisticated pattern matching and string manipulation
– Perl is the master of this, but it traces back to the text processing sed/awk ancestry.
– These are generally based on extended regular expression

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■ High level data types
– In general, scripting languages provide support for sets, dictionaries, lists
and tuples (at a minimum).
– While languages like C++ and Java have these, they usually need to be
imported separately.
– optimizations like arrays indexed using hash tables are quite common.
– Garbage collection is always automatic, so user never has to deal with
heap/stack issues.
 Innovative Features: Scope and Names
■ Most scripting languages do not require variables to be declared
– Perl and JavaScript permit optional declarations - sort of compiler-checked
documentation
– Perl can be run in a mode (use strict ’vars’) that requires declarations
■ With or without declarations, most scripting languages use dynamic typing
– The interpreter can perform type checking at run time, or coerce values when
appropriate
– Tcl is unusual in that all values—even lists—are represented internally as strings

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 Innovative Features: Scope and Names
■ Nesting and scoping conventions vary quite a bit
– Scheme, Python, JavaScript provide the classic combination of nested subroutines
and static (lexical) scope
– Tcl allows subroutines to nest, but uses dynamic scope
– Named subroutines (methods) do not nest in PHP or Ruby
– Nested blocks are statically scoped in Perl
– In Ruby, they are part of the named scope in which they appear
– Scheme, Perl, Python provide for variables captured in closures
– PHP and the major glue languages (Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby) all have sophisticated
namespace rules
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 Innovative Features: Scope and Names
■ Undeclared variables with static scope present an interesting issue: how do
we know if x is local, global, or in-between (if scopes can nest)?
– In Perl, all variables are global unless otherwise specified.
– In PHP, local unless explicitly imported.
– Ruby has only two levels: $foo is global, foo is local; @foo is instance of current
object, and @@foo is instance variable of current object’s class
– In Python, all variables are local by default, unless explicitly imported:
i=1; j=3
def outer()

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 Innovative Features: Scope and Names
■ Scope in Python
– By default, there is no way for a nested scope to write to a
non-local or non-global scope
■ R has an interesting convention:
– Normal assignment puts value into the local variable:
i <- 4
– Superassignment puts value into whatever variable would be found
under normal (static) scoping rules:
i <<- 4

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