What's the difference between a programming language, a scripting language, and a markup language?

The primary difference between a "programming language" (C, C++, VB etc.) and a "scripting language" (PHP, ASP, JSP, JavaScript, VBScript)is that code written in a programming language needs to be compiled before it is run. Once it is compiled, it can be run any number of times.

Scripting languages, on the other hand, are interpreted at run-time. This means that every time you want to run the program, a separate program needs to read the code, interpret it, and then follow the instructions in the code. Compiled code has already been interpreted into machine language, so it is will typically execute faster because the conversion into machine language has already been done.

Markup languages (HTML, XML) are somewhat different from both of the others. A markup language is simply a set of tags that are used to "mark up" text documents so that sections of text can be logically arranged and labeled. These documents can be viewed as plain text, or, more commonly, are viewed through a browser. The browser parses the document, looking for markup tags, and it then arranges the text and/or formats it according to the values in the tags.

While the previous descriptions of the three "languages" explain them, and distinguish between the two "procedural" languages that describe procedures to run, and the "formatting" languages that "mark up" data, a simple nuance can be used to distinguish between "programming" and "scripting" languages, especially those in the fringe areas.

Using the question of compilation versus interpretation to define languages gives a "fuzzy" definition for languages like Java, which can be compiled to a byte code which is then interpreted at runtime. And there have long been programming tools such as Borland's Turbo C / Pascal which would interpret languages that were normally compiled, to allow more rapid development.

The difference between "programming" and "scripting" is better defined by usage, or application, as well as scope and purpose. A programming language is used for building standalone projects, or "applications"; a scripting language is used to write "scripts" that interact with other data or systems to perform parts of a task rather than an entire workflow.

An example might make this clearer. Imagine an accounting application program used in a large corporation. The program would be written in a programming language by a team of developers, probably at some other company, a software house. It would have a long lifecycle, and have many features. One of them might be to generate a series of invoices. This would be one of many tasks done with the program, which runs for extended periods of time. But it might be necessary to separate the invoices, sending some to a printer in the mail room, others to a fax machine, and still others to be sent via email. This task might be accomplished by a local programmer, who writes a simple "script" that sorts through the accounting program's output files and dispatches them appropriately. That little snippet of local, customized programming would be a script, written in a scripting language. The script would be started, perform its one task, and stop.

Programming languages are used to write programs, which can run for a while and do multiple things.
Scripting languages are used to write scripts, which run for a short duration to perform a single, simple task.

Of course, there are applications programs that have been cobbled together out of collections of scripts, and there are programmers who use a traditional programming language to write a full-blown program to erase a file, but the general sense of the range of usages should now be clear.

Some languagees such as Perl or Visual Basic can be used for both kinds of task, and therefor can be characterized as one or the other.

The answer is basically correct, but here are a few modifications:

Not all programming languages are compiled the same. C/C++ and VB are compiled languages, Java can be considered compiled or not depending on your definition of compiled. Perl is interpretted and very much considered a language... there are others that fall into this category as well.

ASP is a construct of JScript, VBScript or C# and is not really a language as much as a way of using a language for server side development.
JSP is a shortcut method for developing servlets. JSP pages are converted to Java source code and then compiled into servlets.

The markup language information is a little out-dated. HTML is used for web page development and is viewed in a browser, while XML is used for any kind of data. It is "human-readable" in that you can view the text it is constructed from, though it may mean little to you. XML can be used to create and define other MLs such as MathML, SMIL, SVG, or XML-RPC. None of these represent text documents, they represent mathematical equations, multimedia content, vector graphics and remote procedure callls respectively.

that code written in a proramming languages needs to be compiled before it is run once it is compiled it can be run any number of times.

Programing languages are compiled, where as scriptig languages never compiled they always interpreted.Scripting languages must embedded with markup laguages but programming languages are stand alone.Programming langaues have complier to generate machine dependent code or some other.Every programming language have own compiler.

I prefer classifying the languages into programming language or scripting language categories based on the following two criteria:

1) Minimum number of entities needed to run the code created in that language:
For programming languages(C,C++) its one(the .exe file) Sure you can create systems which interpret the C,C++ code but u can reduce the base minimum to one file. For scripting languages the number of entities needed is minimum two: the script file and the script interpreter. This is a weak criteria since we can always argue about creating a system which can generate native code out of scripts.

2) Whether it allows us to write general purpose code(C/C++ allows us to write every possible type of application we can imagine of. Scripting languages like Perl wont let me write a device driver or a bootloader).

If we apply both these rules strictly, Java moves out of the definition of a programming language although it is fairly generic. Also peices of code like device drivers and bootloader are strongly machine/OS dependent while Java was meant to be independent of these things.

hi frnds,
i think you might know their is difference between java programming and java script but the syntax of these are same in c.
scripting language is used for developing the client side and moving to markup language their is a path from path from client to server to transfer the data.