Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:

A scripting language is a programming language made for a hypothetical
machine, not too different from a programming language made for a real
machine, one made of hardware.

>
  C is clearly a programming language, yet its specification
  says, "The semantic descriptions in this document describe
  the behavior of an abstract machine". And you cannot buy
  this abstract C machine as a piece of hardware anywhere!

Of course. :) But we both know what that means.  It's abstract because
there are so many real machines for which this abstract one is an
abstraction of.  And the real ones are the target of the language.