ArcInfo is the flagship GIS product of ESRI and it's custom ArcInfo Macro Language (AML) is the primary means of scripting and automation. However because ArcInfo is command line based, scripting is also possible from the operating system shell or in conjunction with other scripting tools like perl, tcl or python, though that is not seen as often. Note that beginning with ArcInfo v8 (aka ArcGIS) the primary scripting language is becoming Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).