I started getting into making bash scripts lately, have been making useful tools with them, but since I'm already a PHP programmer and web developer, I like integrating bash scripting with that. I know thats not viable on commercial servers though. Java looks good but this whole JDK toolkit is big and bulky, I don't like installing all that software on my system. Linux comes with python and perl pre-installed so I'd prefer to go that route. Can I integrate them into my web apps though? For example, can I get PHP scripts to run perl and python scripts? I'm well used to MySQL but I recently learned how to use SQLite and I like the way you can integrate it right into standalone applications. Python syntax is a bit alien to me, although if I can adjust to bash scripting then it shouldnt be much of an issue learning python syntax. I know javascript and XML, but I'm looking for something to add an extra dimension to my skills. I know java would do that, but what about perl or python? Or any other languages you can recommend.