My local sw guru uses and likes all of perl, python and ruby (and rails too), though as yet he's failed to get me to see the light. I keep going back to C.

Haha, I hate C I hate pointers I've been taught Java and seeing as you don't have to worry, I still can't use the damn things properly

Bash has always had my vote, but I feel the need for something a bit more powerful...I'll not be touching C though

Welcome to the forums by the way

Ruby looks really cool
I'm going to spent some of the weekend converting my scripts to it..

Note to self:
http://theadmin.org/articles/2005/9/25/ ... ds-in-ruby