Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!gdr!exspes
From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: REXX -- what is it?
Message-ID: <1989Dec15.111119.5845@gdt.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Dec 89 11:11:19 GMT
Reply-To: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 17


I think I'd go as far as saying that REXX is the BEST 'command-script
interpretive' language I have seen in the past 20 years.  (I use it on
VM/CMS.  No, I haven't used every scripting language in the world, so
there may be a good one that I've missed -- but I have used a fair
number.)  It's only a pity that the underlying system (VM/CMS) is by
contrast the most primitive operating system I've seen since OS/8 (on
DEC PDP8's) and PCP (on IBMs).  (Imagine PC-DOS or MS-DOS, but with the
useful bits removed.)

An implementation of REXX running on top of a rich operating system
like Unix would be absolutely the cat's whiskers.  On CMS, the very
fact that REXX is so good serves, by the contrast, to provide a
continual reminder of just how tacky the operating system is.
-- 
Paul Smee, Univ of Bristol Comp Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW, Tel +44 272 303132
 Smee@bristol.ac.uk  :-)  (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you MUST)