I'm looking for a way to write some simple scripts in javascript, like I would in ruby. For example, I might write a script like:
var str = "Hello World";
console.log(str);
And i want to able to call it from my command line like this:
js hello_world.js
Is there some sort of Javascript runtime, that includes a standard library that would allow me to do this style of script development? I know there is node.js, but that is specific to a web server, right?
what about mozilla's spidermonkey ?
With Phantom JS you can easily run a javascript from command line and it naively supports DOM, CSS Selector and JSON.
Well, there's JScript.NET:
http://www.devsource.com/c/a/Techniques/JScriptNET-Applications-at-the-Command-Line/1/
Why do you want to do this in javascript? Why not use a language that is suitable for this type of command line environment such as Perl? Javascript's main purpose is to faciltate client-side browser control.
As mentioned in this previous question, you might want to check out Rhino, an implementation of Javascript written in Java. Specifically, the page on the JavaScript shell might be of interest.
Hope this helps.
Node.js has emerged as the clear winner here, at least for me.
http://nodejs.org/