ruby or python more suitable for scripting in all OSes?

Question

if i want to script a mini-application (in the Terminal) in mac and windows, which one is preferred: ruby or python?

or is there no major difference just a matter of taste?

cause i know python definetely is a good scripting language.

thanks

Answer 1

Matter of taste, really. They each have a pretty good set of libraries and are cross-platform, so it'll be a matter of which one you prefer to code in.

Answer 2

I believe python and ruby (since at least OS X 10.4) came pre-installed on Mac, that is a convenience.

There are easy installers for Windows. On Linux of course your mileage may vary.

As much as i like python myself, don't think one is better than the other for your purpose.

Answer 3

Python is perhaps a little more common, and arguably more mature, so on that basis alone, it may be worth choosing Python.

That said, both are available by default on Mac OS X, and neither are available on Windows by default, so in this case it really does not matter.

Answer 4

i would suggest to go for python over ruby on windows unless you are willing to port some gems as a few (no i cannot say what percentage) of the gems use unix/mac specific stuff (example from ENV[OSTYPE] to wget to unix processes) that i have seen break on windows.

Answer 5

Personally, I find the documentation for Python is much better than that for Ruby. The Docs for Ruby are full of cryptic examples that are terse, short, and just not very helpful. On the other hand, docs for Python exist everywhere, but more importantly, in a useful, helpful form.

Answer 6

Both are excelent options, you won't go wrong no matter which one you chose. You should check out the availability of libraries for the task at hand and also how helpful the community is. The Python community is humongous and seems friendlier to me. Rubists seem to have some anger management issues.