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Scripting languages

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PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive backronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
Q2005
JavaScript (JS) is a programming language and core technology of the Web, alongside HTML and CSS. It was created by Brendan Eich in 1995. As of 2025, the overwhelming majority of websites (98.9%) uses JavaScript for client side webpage behavior.
Python
general-purpose programming language
Q42478
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".
Q161053
general-purpose programming language
Lua
Lua is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed mainly for embedded use in applications. Lua is cross-platform software, since the interpreter of compiled bytecode is written in ANSI C, and Lua has a relatively simple C application programming interface (API) to embed it into applications.
GNU Bash
GNU Project implementation of the standard Unix shell
scripting language
programming language for run-time events
ActionScript
ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning it is a superset of the syntax and semantics of the language more widely known as JavaScript), though it originally arose as a sibling, both being influenced by HyperTalk. ActionScript code is usually converted to bytecode format by a compiler.
Q213970
AWK () is a scripting language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and it is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The shell command that runs the AWK processor is named .
Scala
general-purpose programming language
Tcl
scripting language
Q840410
PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a language defined for it. Originally only for Windows, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-source and cross-platform on August 18, 2016, with the introduction of PowerShell Core. The former is built on the .NET Framework and the latter on .NET (previously .NET Core).
TypeScript
TypeScript (TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications. It transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Microsoft as free and open-source software released under an Apache License 2.0.
Visual Basic Script
VBScript (Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM), based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting. It was popular with system administrators for managing computers and automating many aspects of computing environments, and has been installed by default in every desktop release of Microsoft Windows since Windows 98; in Windows Server since Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack; and optionally with Windows CE (depending on the device it is installed on).
Clojure
Clojure (, like closure) is a dynamic and functional dialect of the programming language Lisp on the Java platform.
ECMAScript
ECMAScript (; ES) is a standard for scripting languages including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. It is best known as a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different web browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the document ECMA-262.
Dart
programming language
Apache Groovy
programming language
Q305876
sed (short for stream editor) is a utility that transforms text via a script written in a relatively simple and compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. The functionality of sed is based on the scripting features of the interactive editor ed ("editor", 1971) and the earlier qed ("quick editor", 1965–66). It was one of the earliest tools to support regular expressions, and remains in use for text processing, most notably with the substitution command. Popular alternative tools for text man
AutoIt
AutoIt is a freeware programming language for Microsoft Windows. In its earliest release, it was primarily intended to create automation scripts (sometimes called macros) for Microsoft Windows programs but has since grown to include enhancements in both programming language design and overall functionality.
REXX
Rexx (restructured extended executor) is a high-level programming language developed at IBM by Mike Cowlishaw. Both proprietary and open source Rexx interpreters exist for a wide range of computing platforms, and compilers exist for IBM mainframe computers. Rexx is used for scripting, application macros and application development. As a general purpose scripting language, Rexx is considered a precursor to Tcl and Python.
Adobe ColdFusion
rapid web app development platform
AppleScript
AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. that facilitates automated control of Mac applications. First introduced in System 7, it is currently included in macOS in a package of automation tools. The term AppleScript may refer to the scripting language, to a script written in the language, or to the macOS Open Scripting Architecture that underlies the language.
Bourne shell
command line interpreter for operating systems
Z shell
Unix shell
JScript
JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and HTML Applications, and as a standalone Windows scripting language. It is proprietary software.
Jython
Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. It was known as JPython until 1999.
CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript is a programming language that compiles to JavaScript. It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python, and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Some added features include list comprehension and destructuring assignment.
Hack
programming language
COMMAND.COM
thumb|250px| running in a Windows console on [[Windows 95 (MS-DOS Prompt)]]
shell script
script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system
REBOL
Rebol ( ; historically REBOL) is a cross-platform data exchange language and a multi-paradigm dynamic programming language designed by Carl Sassenrath for network communications and distributed computing. It introduces the concept of dialecting: small, optimized, domain-specific languages for code and data, which is also the most notable property of the language according to its designer Carl Sassenrath:
KornShell
KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was based on Bourne shell source code. Other early contributors were Bell Labs developers Mike Veach and Pat Sullivan, who wrote the Emacs and vi-style line editing modes' code, respectively. KornShell is backward-compatible with the Bourne shell and includes many features of the C shell, inspired by the requests of Bell Labs users.
Job Control Language
scripting languages used on IBM mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem
tcsh
tcsh ( “tee-see-shell”, “tee-shell”, or as “tee see ess aitch”, tcsh) is a Unix shell based on and backward compatible with the C shell (csh).
Server Side Includes
interpreted server-side scripting language
Raku
member of the Perl family of programming languages
Emacs Lisp
dialect of Lisp used in GNU Emacs
AutoLISP
AutoLISP is a dialect of the programming language Lisp built specifically for use with the full version of AutoCAD and its derivatives, which include AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD Mechanical. Neither the application programming interface (API) nor the interpreter to execute AutoLISP code is included in the AutoCAD LT product line (up to Release 2023, AutoCAD LT 2024 includes AutoLISP). A subset of AutoLISP functions is included in the browser-based AutoCAD web app.
server-side scripting
technique used in web development
Google Apps Script
scripting platform developed by Google
Io
programming language
fish
user-friendly interactive Unix shell
Pike
programming language
MUMPS
MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts General Hospital for managing patient medical records and hospital laboratory information systems.
GNU Guile
Scheme implementation intended especially for extensions
JRuby
JRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language atop the Java Virtual Machine, written largely in Java. It is free software released under a three-way EPL/GPL/LGPL license. JRuby is tightly integrated with Java to allow the embedding of the interpreter into any Java application with full two-way access between the Java and the Ruby code (similar to Jython for the Python language).
SWIG
The Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) is an open-source software tool used to connect computer programs or libraries written in C or C++ with scripting languages such as Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Tcl, and other language implementations like C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, D, OCaml, Octave, Scilab and Scheme. Output can also be in the form of XML.
Almquist shell
lightweight Unix shell
template processor
software that produces documents by combining templates with a data model
AMPL
AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (e.g. large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems).
LiveCode
LiveCode (formerly Revolution and MetaCard) is a cross-platform rapid application development runtime system inspired by HyperCard. It features the LiveCode Script (formerly MetaTalk) programming language which belongs to the family of xTalk scripting languages like HyperCard's HyperTalk.
HyperTalk
HyperTalk is a discontinued high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. Because the main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, HyperTalk programmers were usually called "authors" and the process of writing programs was known as "scripting". HyperTalk scripts resembled written English and used a logical structure similar to that of the Pascal programming language.
Expect
Expect is an extension to the Tcl scripting language written by Don Libes. The program automates interactions with programs that expose a text terminal interface. Expect, originally written in 1990 for the Unix platform, has since become available for Microsoft Windows and other systems.
BeanShell
BeanShell is a small, free, embeddable Java source interpreter with object scripting language features, written in Java. It runs in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), dynamically executes standard Java syntax and extends it with common scripting conveniences such as loose types, commands, and method closures, like those in Perl and JavaScript.
Object-Graph Navigation Language
Object-Graph Navigation Language (OGNL) is an open-source Expression Language (EL) for Java, which, while using simpler expressions than the full range of those supported by the Java language, allows getting and setting properties (through defined setProperty and getProperty methods, found in JavaBeans), and execution of methods of Java classes. It also allows for simpler array manipulation.
Linden Scripting Language
script language used within Second Life
JavaFX Script
programming language
Jakarta Expression Language
domain-specific language used in Jakarta EE web applications