Program, Application, and Software

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 01:43:28 +0100, Alexander Kapps wrote:

> What difference does it make? Is 'print "Hello"' a program or a script?
> Are you saying, that it depends on whether you have to manually call
> some compiler?

Thats the way the term 'script' is usually used in the UNIX/Linux world. 

In that environment you'd call awk and Perl scripting languages but C and 
Java are known as compiled languages. The size of the source isn't 
relevant: if you can mark a source file as executable and simply run it 
its a 'script' while if it needs a separate preparatory step to generate 
a separate executable its just a source file for a compiled language. 

The distinction doesn't seem to be used in a Windows environment. Indeed, 
it doesn't make sense there since executables are limited to .BAR or .CMD 
files, which are directly interpreted by the command processor, and .EXE 
or .COM files, which must be compiled before they can be run. AFAIK 
there's no way you can mark anything else, such as an awk, Perl or Python 
source file, as executable since there is no 'executable' attribute in 
any Windows filing system.


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martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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