title: Exact difference and relation between JSTL and Expression Language
body: <p>After reading the Q&amp;A <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3177733/how-to-avoid-java-code-in-jsp-files">How to avoid Java code in JSP files?</a> I stopped coding with scriptlets.</p>
  
  <p>So started reading <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/tags/jstl/info">JSTL</a> and got a doubt that I found JSTL is have a relation with  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/tags/el/info">EL</a>.</p>
  
  <p>But I am not getting the exact relation between them.</p>
  
  <p>Here I got the code from <a href="http://www.apekshit.com/t/87/JSTL---Core-Tags" rel="noreferrer">here</a> </p>
  
  <pre><code> &lt;c:set var="test" value="JSTL Core Tags"&gt;&lt;/c:set&gt;
   &lt;c:out value="${test}"&gt;&lt;/c:out&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know <code>&lt;c:set</code> is a JSP tag and <code>${test}</code> is Expression language ..</p>
  
  <p>My confusions are </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Won't working with <code>JSTL</code> alone work? Does it always need the support of <code>EL</code> ? If not always needed, how in the above case?</p></li>
  <li><p>How to simply use the Expression language without JSTL tags?</p></li>
  </ol>