Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mwm From: mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (With friends like these, who needs hallucinations) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx Subject: Re: REXX: What is it? (AREXX)?) Message-ID: Date: 16 Dec 89 01:30:59 GMT References: <1585@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <1989Dec10.203627.10443@NCoast.ORG> <[25835d33:21.3]comp.lang.rexx;1@tronsbox.UUCP> <5888@alvin.mcnc.org> <1989Dec12.160943.16118@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> <1989Dec12.211158.25536@NCoast.ORG> <1989Dec12.235944.7970@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 24 In-reply-to: davewt@NCoast.ORG's message of 13 Dec 89 22:20:01 GMT >> 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. >> As any FORTH programmer can tell you, what comes out of the >> box is just the beginning. The only limits to ANY language are the real, >> factual, limitations of the implementation. Either there's something really spiffy I'm missing in REXX (that would be nice), or you've not really used FORTH or LISP (my personal favorite) or any other extensible language. What both of those have that I can't find in REXX is the ability to create new control structures. REXX let's me add all kinds of new functions, and neat new commands, and so on. But I can't add something like the C switch statment. In LISP (and I assume FORTH, but couldn't do it myself) I can do things like that.