Published at LXer:

In a previous article, I showed how the Rexx scripting language is both powerful and easy to use. It uses specific techniques to reconcile these two goals that are often considered in conflict.This article walks you through two example Rexx scripts so you can get a feel for the language.

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Hmmm... I first encountered REXX in one of my very first jobs – when IBM won a University contract for the engineering department that DEC/VAX was supposed to win. They installed an IBM mini-mainframe computer running the "VM/SP" operating system, of which REXX was a feature as one of three available scripting languages. (I was the young new-graduate schleb who was supposed to make it all work – and who did. Yes, for a time I wrote quite a lot of REXX.)

I was always impressed with some of the "peculiar but innovative" features of that language, and found it particularly easy to work with at the time. I always wondered what happened to it, and I'm very glad to see that it appears to be getting a revival. It is a very pragmatic scripting language.