Looking for a FORMAL definition of "Scripting Languages"

[Marlon_Br]

I always had to myself that scripting languages were all the languages that are not compiled into bytecodes, such as server-side languages: (PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, CGI, Perl, Python) or client-side (JavaScript, VBScript etc).

But then I saw this definition at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki “Scripting languages can be interpreted or compiled, but because interpeters are simpler to write than compilers, they are interpreted at least as often as they are compiled.”

That pretty much killed what I thought Scripting Languages were. So now, I wanted to know if someone could tell me a good definition of what actually is a Scripting Language. If there is a good definition that differs scripting languages and any other programming languages

Is it something formal, or it is just used generally and informally by programmers to emphasize that the program or language is simple? It is still not clear to me, and I believe nether to many people that think that knows what it is.

[bokeh]

“Scripting languages can be interpreted or compiled, but because interpeters are simpler to write than compilers, they are interpreted at least as often as they are compiled.” Yes but this happens at runtime of course whereas C++ or Java are compiled before runtime.

[NogDog]

Don't know if this is "formal", but I always thought that scripting languages were any language where the source code is read and processed at runtime, instead of compiling the source code file into a separate, executable file which is then processed at runtime.

Some scripting languages, such as PHP or Perl, are compiled at runtime and then that compilation result is executed, whereas others such as BASIC are interpreted: one line or command is read from the source code at a time and processed, then the next line, etc.

So in summary, scripting languages require that there is some executable program on the computer which reads, parses, and iterprets or compiles the source code at runtime so that the user's program can be executed.

[Marlon_Br]

Thanks one more time guys,, for what I can see then what separates scripting languages to non-scripting languages is when the code in compiled
scripting languages require that there is some executable program on the computer which reads, parses, and iterprets or compiles the source code at runtime