I do not know what you mean by 'scripting language,' so I'll take it to mean 'a language with garbage collection, rapid development, and general ease of use.'

Perl is a good language for short programs that need to chop text around, and it's a trippy language to learn, too. Python is a somewhat decent language, big on batteries but small on power. (I'm such a language bigot, aren't I?) PHP is utter crap. Well, I'm being a bit mean about PHP, since people use it to do useful things, but it's just about the most poorly designed language that is frequently used today. It's basically a retarded version of C++, and that's only a bit more powerful and versatile than assembly language.

Lua is an excellent programming language, and of the four you have mentioned, I recommend it the most. The reasons are simple: it's simple, and it's got closures, first class functions, and proper tail calls. But this is still not my recommendation...

It is quite simple: every other language you will see in this thread has a set of features that is a subset of the features of Common Lisp. I recommend learning Lisp for a few reasons:

1. It's the most powerful and versatile language*. (Or maybe some other variant of Lisp is; this is just standardized and the most popular.)
2. If you learn Lisp, you'll never have trouble learning another language.
3. Your ability to think about programming will improve, too.

Don't balk when you see the parentheses. I can assure you they're not a problem :-)

*O'Camlers, Haskellers, and Prologers may feel free to disagree.

The reason i didnt mention LISP in my list of languages is that the resoureces present for LISP like ebooks and tutorials are very sparse on the net so i was wondering if i would ever be able to learn it.
Like there is CPAN for PERL nad PEAR for PHP no such thing for LISP i think ?

But what you say has really surprised me ! I thought any one of the four i have mentioned would have topped the list of Scripting languages. And btw by scripting language i mean something which can be used for linking modules, lightweight tasks, automating tasks and of thel likes (i dont mind if its more powerful )

Still waiting for your feedback, thanks.

PS: I thought you were a Python proponent

There is no "best", at best there might be a "best" for some specific purpose.

I constantly wonder why people can't get that simple fact into their brains (or what passes for one).

There's an infinite number of purposes, and only a finite number of languages, so at least one language has to be the best for an infinite number of purposes.

While Python is a decent language, it just doesn't seem to shine at any particular thing. I'd use it if one of its libraries had some ability that happened to be direly useful to me at the moment.

For interacting with the OS (especially Unix OSes), I feel very comfortable with Perl -- more comfortable than with anything else. I can't recommend against Perl. But I keep looking at Lua (haven't used it) and it just seems very nice.

I think anything but PHP is tolerable. It's not like you're only allowed to learn only one language -- I end up using different languages for different things, anyway.

I believe i made this point clear in the first post that "i know there is no best as such and just wanted to get the perspective of best from members of this forum" i.e. i just wanted an opinion of what you ppl thought was the best scripting langugage.

@Mr. Rashakil
Thanks a lot for your feedback, i was actually confused on where to start and just wanted to know what was best according to the people of this forum but looks like not many people are intrested in sharing their opinion. Hmmm.. so the options which i have at present are Perl, LUA, LISP, and so on...
Seems like a tough decision but looks like i will have to make one. Anyways thanks for the help of all you people and hoping to get more help from you people.

PHP is quite hardly crap, seriously. I've seen sooooo many worse languages out there (perl being one of them) that it's not funny.

As a programmer, I've had experience with a TON of languages and designs, from perl (ick!) to php to C to BASIC to html (if you want to even call THAT a language), and I'd say php, hands down. Why? Probably because I'm more C oriented (I spent some 6 years working on a C based RPG). The day I found php/mysql, I just loved it, seriously!

To each his own, though. The "best scripting language" doesn't exist,it's more like what is your favorite, and, for that, I'd have to say hands down, it would be php.

Perl, to me, is too permissions related, and too messy to deal with
C is alright, but it's not really convenient to design web apps with C (though it can be done)
HTML, well, the jury's still out there. It's INCREDIBLY basic and can't do much of anything. Like I said, is it even a language .
ASP might be nice, but the problem there is the reliance on Windows servers. If I want to program something (say, a billing client, forum, CMS, etc), I want it to be able to run on ANY piece of hardware/server, with very little hardware requirements. I can't really say that ASP is that good
Java/Tomcat? Too server intensive. I've seen too many java based apps that freak out a server. Not good. I'm not saying this can't be done with other languages (php/perl), but for the most part what I've seen says that it's not good.

Of course, as I said, it's all in taste, and what you're using for. If you're after mysql/db functionality, then php is probably THE easiest language to get that done in.

By the way, just to clear a point, the languages which you listed out, C and HTML are not scripting languguages.
And ofcourse i know there is no best, but there is always one language which wins hands down in a particular domain in terms of support, add on modules and so on.

Coldfusion is by far the most capable scripting language that I know of. It is easy to learn and extremely user friendly. Beats PHP hands down, and will write Flash, PHP, and Javascript for you. Not necessary to install additional components for shopping cart functionality. Comments that never pass to the browser...

Python.

I abhored Python when I first studied it but, over time, I started to fancy it.