Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!uflorida!mephisto!mcnc!brooking
From: brooking@mcnc.org (Jim Brooking)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: Re: REXX: What is it? (AREXX)?)
Summary: Rexx uses
Keywords: REXX
Message-ID: <5888@alvin.mcnc.org>
Date: 12 Dec 89 00:22:32 GMT
References: <1585@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <1989Dec10.203627.10443@NCoast.ORG> <[25835d33:21.3]comp.lang.rexx;1@tronsbox.UUCP>
Organization: MCNC; RTP, NC
Lines: 46

In article <[25835d33:21.3]comp.lang.rexx;1@tronsbox.UUCP>, akcs.dfrancis@tronsbox.UUCP (Dennis Francis Heffernan) writes:
> 
>      rexx is also available for PC's- in the MS-DOS world as (I belive)
> Personal Rexx, and for Amigas as ARexx.  Don't know what you would DO with
> it on a MS-DOS clone, seeing as how they generally don't multitask, but I
> assume you must be able to do something with it if someone thought it was
> worth putting out.

I can't resist saying that REXX is, in fact a full-featured programming
language complete with variables, arrays, ALL known control structures
(if...then...else, do on an index, do while, do until, select (like c's
case)), procedures, and about everything else one needs to write
programs. It doesn't have a math library (tho hooks are available
to link to existing libraries), but it does have an extensive library
of character manipulating functions and a powerful string parsing
statement. So it is a programming language. And it does NOT have
mandatory declaration statements. A variable's type is determined by its
usage. 

PLUS: when the REXX interpreter encounters a statement it doesn't
recognize, it passes it out to the "environment" from which the
REXX program was invoked, either the operating system, or (in case
of CMS and Personal REXX) the editor (XEDIT in CMS or KEDIT in DOSland).
Other environments probably exist, but I've been out of the IBM
mainframe world for a while and recall only a VM PASSTHRU environment
(implemented by the U. of Maine). I heard a GDDM REXX environment
was planned, but have no experience with it.

Why use REXX? It's so easy to write programs it's almost embarrassing.
There's a nice debugger built in, and the language is VERY rich. The
result is that you can usually finish writing your REXX program while
the PASCAL programmer is still coding declarations. (This is from a personal
experience!). The last time "what good it it?" arose in this newsgroup
someone commented that he'd written a complete version of the unix
"make" command in a afternoon, in around 1,000 statements. Try that
in C, PASCAL or FORTRAN sometime!

Hear tell someone is working on a REXX implementation for unix.
After recently writing my first shell script of any substance,
I can't wait for REXX. I predict REXX will be the language of
choice for most programmers by 1995. It does need widely available
math libraries, and it unfortunately needs to shuck its IBM mainframe
stigma. But it's a dynamite language. Try it!!

					Jim Brooking
					N.C. Supercomputing Center