I've used JavaScript and some frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, some node.js) for client-side web programming, but never on the desktop, where I do most of my scripting work in either Python or Bash.But IMHO, JavaScript would make a great scripting language if used outside of the browser. Has anyone tried this? Can JavaScript be an adequate replacement for Python/Perl/Bash for quick and dirty scripting tasks?
Can JavaScript be used as a general scripting language?
javascript;scripting
Yes! You definitely can do that with Node.js or Rhino. For example the coffeescript compiler is nothing but a node.js script. I will admit that it is not generally my first choice for desktop scripting but I see no reason why it would not work quite well for a number of tasks. 