Platform script

A platform script is a program that runs once against a chart and then stops, as distinct from software that stays attached and is invoked again on every incoming price. Both are written in the same language and use the same interface to the terminal; the difference is lifetime. That lifetime is the whole of the distinction and most of the consequence. A script suits a single job on demand — closing everything, placing a prepared set of orders, writing the contents of a chart out to a file — because it can be told to act on the state of the account as it is at that moment. It cannot react to what happens next, because it is no longer there: a script that has placed an order does not go on to manage it, and anything that has to respond to later prices belongs in software that stays loaded.