While that is one quite useful application of DSLs, they're certainly used more widely than config files. Care to expand further?
Essentially what I am asking here is: where do we set the line between "scripts" and "configuration files"? Because scripts are simply configuration files with a tree-like structure as they represent programs.
Scripts "configure the execution paths of your program".
A DSL thus is just a configuration file with a set of rules of applying those tree-like structures to each other.
I would say the line is Turing-completeness.
For me, DSL are half way between configuration files and scripts. If they are not Turing complete they are configuration languages. If they are, then they are programming language (with a specific use case).
And I think that it is usually a bad idea to have configuration files in Turing complete languages (with exceptions, it can certainly be done well).
>> I would say the line is Turing-completeness.
>> For me, DSL are half way between configuration files and scripts
_you_ would say.
>> If they are not Turing complete they are configuration languages. If they are, then they are programming language (with a specific use case).
Or, you could say that DSLs are what they are: "Domain Specific Languages". Which means that can either be a set of static definitions a-la configuration file, or on another side they can be scripts.
All of these definitions fit really well the meaning of "Domain Specific Language".