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From: jac@gandalf..llnl.gov (James Crotinger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: Re: Summary of responses to query "Why use REXX in Unix environment?"
Message-ID: <69733@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 14 Oct 90 04:25:54 GMT
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  One thing that never seems to get mentioned in these discussions of
"Why use REXX when we have awk, csh, ..." is the ease of interprocess
communication between REXX and applications with REXX ports. I haven't
used REXX on UNIX. However I do use it on an Amiga which is, in many
ways, similar to UNIX (multitasking, has command shells, pipes, etc.).
On the Amiga, many uses have been found for REXX in which the most
important feature of REXX is that it can tie together applicatons from
different sources into an integrated environment. 

  AREXX's popularity started because there was an editor that groked
REXX and Tom Rokicki's TeX package groked REXX. Bingo, instant (or
nearly so) integration between an editor and TeX. Mark an equation,
hit a button and the previewer pops up displaying said equation.
Pretty soon everyone began putting REXX ports in everything and,
finally, Commodore decided to bundle AREXX with the next release of
the OS.

  Do people in the VM/CMS world use REXX for this type of thing?
(Obviously people don't on PC's 8-). How about on UNIX?

  Jim

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
James A. Crotinger   Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab // The above views 
jac@gandalf.llnl.gov P.O. Box 808;  L-630     \\ // are mine and are not 
(415) 422-0259       Livermore CA  94550       \\/ necessarily those of LLNL.