Luke Palmer
To us, scripting meant short, potent code that rolled off your fingers and into the computers mind, compelling it to do your job with reverence to the super power you truly are.
Just when I thought, oh, there are two definitions for "scripting language", another one pops out. So scripting languages can be three things: 1) A language for controlling ('scripting') an application (e.g. TCL, VBA) 2) A language for controlling the running of various applications (e.g. shell scripts) 3) An agile language for making short programs (e.g. Perl) Although Haskell is quite expressive, programs tend to need a bit of 'wrap' (module declaration, imports, etc), making it a bit more heavyweight than Perl or AWK for #3. For #2, I think running other programs are a bit too cumbersome, but perhaps this is just a library problem? I haven't really looke at #1, I think we lack a small, easily embeddable interpreter. So, I wouldn't really call Haskell a scripting language in its current state in any of these senses, although it's close for #3. I think you see more of an advantage for slightly larger programs - ones that you perhaps need to maintain - though. More definitions of scripting language: a) too slow to do real work b) Also they "don't scale well" I think Haskell can be fast enough to do 'real work', and although I haven't really written any large programs in Haskell, I don't see why it should scale worse than other languages. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants