An Analysis of Scripting Languages for Research in Applied Computing

There are several scripting languages that exist today. However, some are used more frequently and popular than others. This is due to certain characteristics and features that they possess. Particularly in applied computing fields like software engineering, bioinformatics and computational biology, scripting languages are gaining popularity. This paper presents a comparative study of ten popular scripting languages that are used in the above mentioned fields/area. For making comparison, we have identified the factors against which these languages are evaluated. Accordingly, based on selected criteria we determine their suitability in the fields of software engineering, bioinformatics and computational biology research. This will serve as a guide to researchers to choose the appropriate scripting language in the various fields.