Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!husc6!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: ARexx
Message-ID: <89099.09:48:43.915093UH2@PSUVM>
Date: 9 Apr 89 13:48:43 GMT
References: <12601@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: Penn State University - Center for Academic Computing
Lines: 71

In article <12601@louie.udel.EDU>, new@udel.EDU (Darren New) says:
>
>I have heard many things about ARexx except for
>what it is and where to get it.  Who wrote this?
>Where can I find out more about it?
>Is it comercial, PD, or what?
>   Thanks -- Darren New

ARexx is a product and can be obtained mail ordr from most the places
that advertise in the Amiga Magazines.  It was written by Bill Hawes.
It is NOT PD.

ARexx is a little hard to explain, because it does not fit in
on simple category, like "spreadsheet".

1.  ARexx is a fairly complete, user friendly programming language with
the usual control structures, infinite precision arithmetic (for machines
with infinite memory, anyway 8-), very good string handling including
parsing  of input strings, and  a large number of hooks into the Amiga
environment.

2.  It is interpreted, but still pretty fast, and small.  It can
be used directly from the command line, so you can write great shell
scripts with it.

3.  It can talk to other programs!!!  This is the neatest part.

Most programs you use respond to some sort of command language, right?
Commands like "next", "previous", select third item on second menu, and
so on.  *IF* the vendor of that software (let's use a text editor for an
example) provides an AREXX PORT, then you can write Arexx programs that
send commands to the software.  You might write a program that
*sorts a list of names* in your editor for you, or searches for certain
lines and changes them somehow, and so forth.

Notice that not only can ARexx send commands to these programs, but it
can retrieve data from thos programs, too, examine that data ,and
act accordingly.

4.  Since it can talk to programs, and retrieve data from them, it can
*act as a go-between*!!!

Suppose you have a database system, and you know how to perform some
query to retrieve data from it.  Then, you could write an ARexx program
to do the same thing(*if* the dbms has a port).

You could also have this ARexx program glue that data into a file you
are editing.  Then, when you are writing that rport, and it comes time
to perform the query and then insert the results of that query into your
report, you just execute one simple ARexx program and ...

Summary:  Are you a Unix user?  Then you know of the power of the shell
plus awk, sed, grep, and the other tools.  ARexx gives you much the same
capability PLUS it can talk to multiple applications.  It is a true
USER AGENT.  Are you a CMS user.  ARexx is REXX, with Amiga features
added.  There is also a REXX for MSDOS (no talking to other applications
on a single tasking machine, though).

What about *if*??  Well, it looks like lots of vendors are busily
adding ARexx ports to their next release, or have already.  See the
ads in an Amiga Magazine.

Are we ever lucky, or what?  This should eventually really pay off.
One thing it means is that every Amiga product can have exactly very similar
(so-called) macro languages---ARexx.  Furthermore, since there only needs
to be one memory resident copy of ARexx to service all those applicatiuons,
we save memory, too.

That's what it is.

                  lee