Question

I need such a scripting language which is:

1. good at string operation;
2. easy to write/read test files;
3. easy to learn.

Any recommendations?

Answer 1

I’d say Python. It’s easy to learn, has lovely clear syntax, tonnes of modules that extend its functionality and – should you want to develop for the web – there’s Django, which I’ve been learning recently. It’s a great webapp framework.
I don’t regret learning Python one bit and does everything I’d want. The error handling is fantastic too – I feel much safer programming in Python than I do in PHP, where the error handling is pretty poor, in my opinion.
I wouldn’t go with Perl, but it is an option. I find Perl looks like someone vomitted code into a file. Ruby is popular among web-people, but it’s not fantastic performance-wise and if you want something very much for the web – PHP is the way to go (though as I said above, Django is amazing with Python).

Overall, I’d go with Python but there are pros and cons of each.