Beyond Shell Scripting

Shell scripts are fine for many purposes, but OS X comes with much more powerful scripting languages, as well as compiled programming languages. Here are a few.

Language

Command

To get started...

C, C++

gcc, g++[a]

man gcc

http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/

Perl

perl

man perl

http://www.perl.com/

PHP

php

man php

http://www.php.net/

Python

python

man python

http://www.python.org/

Ruby

ruby

man ruby

http://ruby-lang.org/

.NET

mono

man mono

http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:OSX

Java

javac

man javac

http://java.sun.com/

[a] These are not supplied with OS X, but are installed with Xcode.

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