[tlug] What is the most appropriate scripting language

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

If I were working on that *other* operating system, I would accomplish 
the following task with a .bat file.

However, on Linux, I'm not sure which scripting language I should be 
using. It seems there are so many, and I'm not sure what the difference is.

What I want to do is create a script that will:

1. Append some information to the top of some text files. Mainly a 
timestamp.

2. Bundle all the files into a tar file.

3. Upload the files to a number of different FTP sites.

4. If possible: email the tar file to one or more email addresses.

These are tasks I'm doing over and over with the same files, so it would 
save me oodles of time to automate this process.

I'm okay with keeping username and passwords for these FTP sites in 
plain text in the script file, as the security risk is extremely limited.

What would be the appropriate scripting language, and might there be a 
resource which would help a newbie like me set up the above tasks?

Thank you for any advice.

ï--
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
Kernel 2.6.17.7
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2