[dsturnbull2049]

Python and Ruby are just as bad as Perl for this. Python being the least fluent of the three for scripting.

If you want a proper language to support your scripting goals, then if you go right up to something like Ocaml or Haskell you'll skip all the pointless stringly-typed problems of perl/ruby/python.

[klibertp]

TCL, REBOL or Red - or maybe some kind of Lisp even - could be better than Python for scripting. There are probably other good languages for this, like maybe Io.

Haskell and OCaml and Java and C++ are about equally badly suited for the job. No, they don't make a good scripting languages. And they don't even want to. Why would anyone try to write shell scripts with them is really beyond me.

[alayne]

It's hard to take people seriously who suggest Haskell as a good language for general scripting. That's some powerful religion.

[hderms]

Yeah, "stringly-typed" isn't really a problem when you're mostly dealing with files made up of strings/lines. Interfacing between programs and files which output mostly idiosyncratic output over an interface of files and strings isn't really made any easier or more robust by using a heavy type system and functional purity...

[owlish]

Can you give an example where Haskell or Ocaml would be more appropriate than the scripting languages you mention?

[laichzeit0]

You're in for a fun surprise if you ever do embedded linux software where a full python or ruby interpreter will either blow your flash space requirements, be too slow or simply unavailable. Perl is a way better option but even then might be too heavy. Busybox however will have a sed or awk.

These are tools that are not going away tomorrow just because something better exists.

[Aloha]

awk+sed, perl, and python are at least somewhat universal - ocaml and haskell are not. Heck, awk+sed even more so, any unix system almost no matter how old, or odd has some version of those two tools on them.