So there are lots of great scripting languages out there that offer a lot over plain old shell scripting. If you know java then groovy is very close and a good option but there is the alternative to write pure java by running the source with runjava (below) or embedding it into a bash script like example.sh.

If you want to run java source in a separate file then use runjava. For example:

Example.java:

import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
public class Example {
 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
 System.out.println("Hello " + args[0] + "!");
 }
}

Run it like this (passing dave as an argument):

$ ./runjava Example.java dave
Hello dave!

On my i7 desktop it takes 0.8 seconds to run (compile and execute). Same startup lag as groovy (which you would expect!).

example.sh is a bash script that has Example.java embedded in it. It is designed to be run with a linux/unix bash shell.

The script is run by entering ./example.sh at the command line.