[OT] difference of Scripting and programming

[John Summerfied]

Nathaniel Hall wrote:

>>
>> The confusion between "what is scripting" and "what is programming"
>> rises from the different levels in the set of activities called 
>> "programming".
> 
> 
> My personal thought is that programs are compiled prior to the user 
> executing it.  A script is compiled at the time it is run.  Is that a 
> good way to differentiate them?

Back when I was using CP/M-86 I had both Microsoft's basic interpreter 
and Microsoft's basic compiler.

Even earlier, there were various PL/1 compilers and interpreters available.

How could a source file be a program to one, a script to the other?

Look more to what these programs do: if they principally run a sequence 
of *x commands I'd classify them as scripts (in the *x environment).

Even then, if I took this:
#!/bin/bash
rsync --times --perms --recursive --timeout=3600 $@

and coded it into equivalent C using the system() function, I'd be hard 
pressed to explain why the C program isn't a script:-)




-- 

Cheers
John

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