Favorite Scripting Language

[stratisphere]

So ya'll... i'm working on a project. This project will have lots of features etc etc and i want to make it very extendable. So it already impliments a plugin system... but I want to make it extendable for people who cant program.

Which leaves scripting (or "macro" like scripting).

I dont want to make my own scripting language for obvious reasons so my question is... what do you lot like?!

[Hacksawbob]

AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!

[stratisphere]

Specifically something I could implement into my program! :P

[kmount]

Multi platform / OS or particular OS only?

[mattx]

AutoIt v3 - Automate and Script Windows Tasks - For Free!

Another vote for AutoIt - the majority of the Admin Bar - [ see sig ] is done using AutoIt....

[stratisphere]

Dang, cant edit the polls to add that as an option.

The software is being developed for Windows (yes yes yes i know... should be platform independant. Sadly what i'm doing; it isnt that easy).

P.s. i'm hoping you guys will be able to have a peek at it soon... not totally within my control tho.

[kmount]

If it's a windows application there's little point in using ASP/PHP as it'll require an interpreter to be installed.

Depending upon complexity, VBS might be the way forward, or AutoIT as others have said.

A bit more info might help also.

[stratisphere]

I just listed those two as they are well known.

Basically, the suite is effectively a network management suite. Some might remember a post I made a while back... well it's not dead!

It's getting pretty near to being useful and already implements a lot of useful tasks. However some tasks are unique per school. Aka end of year procedures. The purpose of implementing scripting is that a school/company/dog can write a quick script which will handle things like end of year procedures without much hassle.

I'm looking into AutoIT at the moment...

[kmount]

If it's a management suite, it might be best served in a web environment in which case PHP or ASP would be my suggested weapon of choice.

[stratisphere]

I agree in a way... things are going web-way... but simply due to the large number of things this suite does (alot client end aswell... think iTalc), doing a pure web based system doesnt work.

Besides, implimenting a kind of PHP/ASP scripting language doesnt mean they have to be actual "pages". Just adopting the scripting style.

I want something which is powerful, but easy to use and something most people know or can learn quickly.

[dhicks]

Besides, implimenting a kind of PHP/ASP scripting language doesnt mean they have to be actual "pages". Just adopting the scripting style.

When you say "implement", you probably don't mean you want to write a lexer, parser, etc, for a full-blown language. It sounds like you're maybe aiming more for a find-and-replace style thing, like how PHP was originally implemented in Perl - write some HTML markup, wrap chunks of code in some special tags that you can search for, pass off those chunks of code to a separate language interpreter with a given initial environment, then replace the original marked-up code section with the output from that script. Me, I like Python for that sort of thing. This doesn't strike me as being for "people who can't program", mind.

You might want to consider XSLT, a "transforms" language - give it some XML and it spews out XML in a different format (say, XHTML). These days you can also use JavaScript to add functionality (XSLT itself is basically a functional language, like Scheme or DSSSL).

I want something which is powerful, but easy to use and something most people know or can learn quickly.

The Rhino JavaScript interpreter is available for embedding into projects, although that might rather be overkill for what you seem to be aiming for here.

--
David Hicks

[stratisphere]

Nah, it's not a "find & replace" kinda thing.

Think scripted tasks. E.g.

// This script runs end of year Procs
// Disabled all Y11 accounts, moves them to the OLD OU

foreach(user in Users.Year11) {
  user.Disable();
  user.Moveto(UserFolders("Site\Users\Students\Leavers\2009"));
  user.ArchiveFiles();
}

Thats the kinda thing it'd do. (Obviously syntax would change... so dont be picky on how i've typed it up there :P)

[tom_newton]

One choice: Python.
Free, OO, neat, quite quick.

[srochford]

If it's Windows and you're looking at future proofing the Powershell is the way to go.

In your end of year type example, one of the things you'll want to do is clear out old mailboxes. From Exchange 2007 on, this is really easy with Powershell but not so easy with other languages.

[papercut]

Shame Python is missing from the list. It's a clean simple language and has great integration with the OS. e.g. COM support in Windows that allows you to script with COM in the same way as you would with VBScript. And of course, it's just as home on Linux and is installed by default on the Mac. Python gets my votes and with companies like Google behind it, it's sure to have a long life.

Ruby is another good choice but concepts such as closures can take a bit of getting use to.