Hello everyone. Can you recommend me a basic scripting language, simpler and more readable than bash commands? Sometimes I need to perform string searches, data calculations, saving and reading files, path searches, and other simple things. I would like something simple to remember
to do these jobs myself. I've had a look at Lua, but it seems more complicated than expected. In windows I used vbscript which also supports msgbox and inputbox plus the if and loops are simpler than bash but remains limited in other aspects.
I cannot give you any advice on this, because I use bash.
But I can do another thing; welcome to Zorin Forums! Have a nice stay here.
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Hi, and welcome!
Python would be the obvious choice for what you are describing. Is very easy to pick up, nice syntax, rich ecosystem of third party packages (and an extensive standard library), fully cross-platform and it already comes installed by default on pretty much all Linux distributions.
You are not the first one to complain about the... peculiarities of Bash. Personally, I've learned the basics and use it for straight forward scripts and automation tasks. But Python remains my go-to whenever I need something more complex than that.
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Thanks for the replies.
I had tried and then abandoned Python on Windows. It's time to start studying it again. I hope I don't waste too much time learning it!
If you don't like Python, there's also PHP which is very mature and has great support for string manipulation, regular expressions and is very well documented. Ignore the fake news about it being slow and insecure. Although it is a bit ugly.
JavaScript, through Node.js, is also another alternative although reading files is a bit more verbose than Python and PHP. But is well documentation and has lots of third part packages.
Overall, for what you are describing, Python would be my preferred choice.
to be honest I prefer verbose languages.
But with php I'm at zero level, js would be much better, but I don't understand anything about nodeJs.
Python is actually the best choice.
The scripts must be written and then launched from the terminal right?
Launched from the terminal, yes.
Agreed.
Yes, though launching from terminal is not the only method. You can set the scripts as executable, then they can launch from double-click. You can assign them a keyboard shortcut and set them to launch on that shortcut. You can set them to autostart... etc.
OK, merci beaucoup.