Scripting is a form of programming.
Typically scripting uses a "higher" level language to make it
easier to use. While messiah:script is
certainly a higher level language than C or C++ it still has a
great deal of power. Messiah:script is,
like most scripting languages, an interpreted language (though it
is compiled into byte code before execution). This means that
scripts will generally run slower than equivalent operations in a
compiled plug-in created using messiah:develop.
That said, the ease of use of messiah:script
makes it a practical alternative for the user without programming
experience. For those with programming experience
messiah:script can be a powerful prototyping tool before you
commit yourself to an API version of your extension (in other
words, before creating a "real" plug-in).
There will likely be two types of users
that will be referring to this document: those
with programming/scripting experience and those without. For
the benefit of each group, the topics here will be broken into two
sections, the first giving a minimal but complete definition/syntax
of the topic followed by another with a little more information for
the new user. This will also allow it to be used for quick
reference once the user is familiar with the
language.