ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at programming and will examine how to write shell scripts in both the Bash shell and DOS.
TYPES OF LANGUAGES The only types of programs that a computer can execute are those written in the computer’s machine language. Machine language consists of instructions, written in binary, that directly reference the computer processor’s instruction set. Writing programs in machine language is extremely challenging. Fortunately though, programmers have long avoided writing programs directly in machine language because of the availability of language translators. A language translator is a program that takes one program as input, and creates a machine language program as output. Each language translator is tailored
to translate from one specific language to the machine language of a given processor. For instance, one translator would be used to translate a C program for a Windows computer and another would be used to translate a C program for a Sun workstation. Similarly, different translator programs would be required to translate programs written in COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language), Ada, or FORTRAN.
