*BSD News Article 69873


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From: jimd@slip106.termserv.siu.edu (Jim Dutton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: REXX versus Unix scripts
Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 23:47:01 CST
Organization: Southern Illinois University
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Comment: AmigaNOS v2.9p
In-Reply-To: <4oocti$ltn@kf8nh.apk.net>
	     (from bsa@kf8nh.apk.net (Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH))
	     (at 31 May 1996 23:20:18 -0400)
X-Mailer: //\\miga Electronic Mail (AmiElm 6.24)

Hi Brandon, on May 31 you wrote:

> | : Perl scripts, yes.  Awk scripts, often.  Shell scripts?  Not!  The shell is
> | : very flexible, but even awk has problems duplicating e.g. PARSE PULL.

One of the real beauties of REXX is the ability to parse a string multiple
times in one pass, using a variety of positional and literal character matching
patterns that are easier to use.

> from long-disused memory of VM/SP REXX manuals.

Ah - my favorite bedtime "story books"  ;)

> | : On the flip side, REXX is also available for Unix.
> | IBM are getting respectable these days... or did someone else port it ?
> 
> Someone else ported it, just as IBM didn't do AREXX (the Amiga's stock
> extension language).

IBM may or may not have their OWN version of Unix REXX. There certainly are
others. Some commercial (Uni-Rexx), and others P.D. At least one P.D. version
has made it to several platforms (Sun (SunOS & Solaris), SGI, DEC Alpha, HP,
IBM RS6000 (AIX 3.2), and Linux).

Under Solaris, it makes a shell prompt look just like VM, which is kind of
freaky when one also HAS VM. I don't think that there is an EXECIO, however,
though I believe that Uni-Rexx does have it.

The version I am speaking of is REXX/imc from Ian Collier (imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk)

Cowlishaw, the original author of REXX, is purported to be working on some
kind of combination between REXX and Java.