*BSD News Article 69958


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From: bsa@kf8nh.apk.net (Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.bill-gates,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,alt.org.team-os2,alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is Microsoft's Internet plan more about its love of power than about users?
Date: 1 Jun 1996 20:15:15 -0400
Organization: Brandon's home server in Parma, Ohio
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <4oqmej$297@kf8nh.apk.net>
References: <4mlpnf$d4p@sidhe.memra.com> <4o4616$gg@anorak.coverform.lan> <4oe1bc$b2b@phobos.Candle.Com> <4omjji$dd@anorak.coverform.lan>
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Also sprach brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers) (<4omjji$dd@anorak.coverform.lan>):
+-----
| : :>: On the flip side, REXX is also available for Unix.
| : :>
| : :>IBM are getting respectable these days... or did someone else port
| : it ?
| 
| : In case you didn't know, IBM sells AIX, its version of Unix. REXX for
| : AIX is extremely inexpensive.
| 
| Ah, IMHO, "available for unix" means source code that will compile under
| varying Unix flavours or something that's for sale for several Unix flavours.
+--->8

In this case, it means "freely available source code known to work on a number
of Unix platforms.  I forget the URL, but you can get to it from the REXX Home
Page (two different ones, in fact!).

| I've looked briefly at REXX.  The bad bit is it's not easy for me 'cos some
| things are just "not the way I'd do it" - I'm used to the unix shell
| approach.  The good bit is that it can do just about everything - as you
| originally said.
+--->8

The same can by and large be said for awk, or Perl, or Python (which I've never
been able to "get into" for the same reason), or Tcl, Icon, Java, etc., ad
nauseam --- or, for that matter, Visual Basic.  "De gustibus non disputandem
est."

(Besides, to old timers like myself "the Unix shell approach" means gluing
tools together.  REXX does that very, very well.  The main difference is that
you don't have to waste CPU cycles spawning an applet to do arithmetic or a
simple string extraction.  In that sense, REXX is much more Unix-like than Perl
is.  [don't tell lwall I said that! :-}])

| Why don't IBM make the REXX source code public ??!?
+--->8

Because with at least two free Unix ports and an unknown (to me) number of
ports to other platforms, they don't need to?  The language spec is public
and has no strings attached that I know of; isn't that enough?

More practically, it is likely that the original REXX was written in IBM S/370
PL/I or assembler, and the current code is in x86 assembler.  (And likely
PowerRISC/PowerPC assembler for the PPC version of Warp Connect.)

-- 
++brandon s. allbery	from home in parma, oh		bsa@kf8nh.apk.net
(work address)						bsa@telotech.com