I think the best scripting language, would be perl. It has its roots in text
processing, but has expanded to much more.
Perl is a perfect solution to the problem, as it can parse text easily, and
fast.
It should also be noted that it's standard in *nix, and practically standard
on NT servers, apparently. (I don't "admin" any NT servers) Also, for those
that are familiar with java, but not perl, it's not a hard transition, as they
are quite similar languages (with their roots both in C/C++).
There is an embedded perl library somewhere (there's a debian package on it,
as I recall), and it shouldn't be too hard to revoke file/execute/network
access, and anything that needs to be added, can be added as a module.
BTW, I'm not a perl evangelist, in fact I don't even code in perl anymore. I
just thought it seemed like the most logical solution.
-- -- Michael Samuel <michael@surfnetcity.com.au>