1. A historical perspective

1.1 Programming command sequences

The history of scripting languages goes back almost to the early days of computing, around the 1950s, when it was necessary to link data files to the programs processing them, and to sequence these executions. This was known as batch processing. The Job Control Language (JCL) is used to program such "batches" on IBM mainframes.

The 1960s saw the advent of time-sharing systems, including the Multics system in 1964. The idea of programming command execution was gaining ground, and the CTSS system's RUNCOM...