Programming languages built into mainstream distros with interpreters (like Python)
 

Hey, other than Python, which languages are built into most Linux distros, using a real-time interpreter, like the Python prompt, where you can just enter some commands and test out ideas before actually creating a file with your program?

Cheers

Hmm, built-in, I dunnow, but there is a "selection" around. How about Ruby, or Perl? Even C++ has to be "installed" (the compiler of course) but I doubt there's a "built-in" language as such. It kinda goes against the Linux thing in that YOU choose what YOU want, not what some packager somewhere deems you should need...that...happens in the "other" one... ;)

Thor

Well, most distros have a shell, of some kind, built in. I'd almost say Bash is universal, but in some cases its dash...which is exactly the same as bash, except for the few cases where it isn't.

I think I know what you mean, and its not real time programming. You want to run the program immediately (without compiling), whether it runs quickly or predictably (from the point of view of a delimited maximum execution time), or not.

Well, Python isn't usually built-in in any very very fundamental way. It is often used for install, or similar, scripting, but, after install, you could still use Linux/Gnu in pretty much the same way, but without some automation and without some add-on utilities, even without Python. Installing Python is often the default though, more often than, say, Ruby, and that's probably what you mean (I think). To me, that makes it more of an option than a 'built in', and you have quite a wide choice of this kind of tool (boo, ruby, tcl, BASIC (?), Forth, Java, Javascript(??) ), if you include all of the things that you could install, rather than just the stuff that you must install and keep installed, or something fundamental breaks.

As mentioned above, Perl is usually installed by default; not sure about the immediate/interactive env you seem to want, but I wouldn't be surprised; its an extremely flexible lang.
If you wanted to find out, I'd ask over at www.perlmonks.org; its where the Perl gurus hang out.

Do you mean an interactive shell? Then Ruby is the only other language I know of that comes with an interactive shell, like Python.