Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!lll-winken!muslix.llnl.gov!jac
From: jac@muslix.llnl.gov (James Crotinger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: Re: REXX: What is it?
Message-ID: <41652@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 15 Dec 89 18:26:19 GMT
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: jac@muslix.llnl.gov (James Crotinger)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/UC Davis
Lines: 31

In article <1989Dec13.222001.10720@NCoast.ORG> davewt@NCoast.ORG writes:
>
>       You obviously have never really USED Rexx, or any other extensible
>language. Your argument that because it doesn't do something "out of the
>box", Rexx must be lacking something is completely wrong.
>.....
>       To judge modern or by definition extensible langues such as
>Rexx or FORTH with the same standards used for more limited languages such
>as BASIC, Fortran, or COBOL is like comparing apples and oranges. The
>whole underlying philosophy of the structure of the language is different,
>and requires a different mind-set to work with it.

  I think there's a bit of confusion on what is meant here by "extensible".
REXX (ARexx at least) is indeed very extensible in that you can write your
own REXX function hosts and function libraries that essentially add new
functions to the REXX language.

  However you cannot extend the syntax of REXX. This is what would be
required to add continuations. (REXX's dynamical scoping does allow
you to do some strange things but it has its limits). In this sense
I don't see how REXX is much different from other procedural languages.
Certainly its lack of datatypes makes it much too low level a language
to do most types of programming in (IMHO). 

  Don't get me wrong---I'm a big fan or REXX. It's very easy to write
and debug simple programs. Its interprocess communications abilities
coupled with the widespread support in commercial applications on the
Amiga have made AREXX an extremely important part of a productive
Amiga environment.

  Jim