I am writing a compare contrast paper on the scripting languages Perl, Ruby and

Question

I am writing a compare contrast paper on the scripting languages Perl, Ruby and Rexx. The main focus is on their approaches and techniques to facilitate designs. I am having trouble figuring out where to start. I have an opening statement explaining the importance of choosing the scripting language based on the targeted platform as well as being user friendly. I then go into how that although some think they look like 3 slightly different version of the same language that could not be further from the truth... The problem is I have no idea how to continue to make this into a 5 page essay. PLEASE HELP me with some suggestions for my approach!!

Explanation / Answer

Scripting language

A scripting language or script language is a programming language that supports scripts, programs written for a special run-time environment that can interpret and automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Environments that can be automated through scripting include software applications, web pages within a web browser, the shells of operating systems , embedded systems, as well as numerous games. A scripting language can be viewed as a domain-specific language for a particular environment; in the case of scripting an application, this is also known as an extension language. Scripting languages are also sometimes referred to as very high-level programming languages, as they operate at a high level of abstraction, or as control languages, particularly for job control languages on mainframes.

Perl

Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. The languages in this family include Perl 5 and Perl 6.The Perl languages borrow features from other programming languages including C, shell script (sh), AWK, and sed. They provide powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary data-length limits of many contemporary Unix commandline tools.Perl is also now supported running under Microsoft Windows and several other operating system.

Perl is often used as a glue language, tying together systems and interfaces that were not specifically designed to interoperate, and for "data munging", that is, converting or processing large amounts of data for tasks such as creating reports. In fact, these strengths are intimately linked. The combination makes Perl a popular all-purpose language for system administrators, particularly because short programs, often called "one-liner programs", can be entered and run on a single command line.

Perl code can be made portable across Windows and Unix; such code is often used by suppliers of software to simplify packaging and maintenance of software build- and deployment-scripts.

Ruby

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language.Ruby is object-oriented: every value is an object, including classes and instances of types that many other languages designate as primitives. Variables always hold references to objects. Every function is a method and methods are always called on an object. Methods defined at the top level scope become members of the Object class. Since this class is an ancestor of every other class, such methods can be called on any object.

Ruby has been described as a multi-paradigm programming language: it allows procedural programming , with object orientation everything is an object or functional programming.

Rexx

Rexx is an interpreted programming language developed at IBM by Mike Cowlishaw. It is a structured, high-level programming language designed for ease of learning and reading. Proprietary and open source REXX interpreters exist for a wide range of computing platforms; compilers exist for IBM mainframe computers.

Rexx is widely used as a scripting and macro language, and is often used for processing data and text and generating reports; these similarities with Perl mean that Rexx works well in Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming and it is indeed used for this purpose. Rexx is the primary scripting language in some operating systems.

A Rexx script or command is sometimes referred to as an EXEC in a nod to Rexx's role as a replacement for the older EXEC command language on CP/CMS and VM/370 and EXEC 2 command language on VM/SP.

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