Uses for REXX?
 

Has anyone ever used this?

Thanks

It's mostly used on IBM mainframes. In AIX, I guess. The only use on Linux I'm aware of is as embedded interpreter for THE (The Hessling Editor) which is a clone of XEDIT/Kedit (or, as N. Bezroukov calls them Eastern Orthodox Editors).

Thanks, supposedly a multipurpose scripting
language ported to Linux, Regina?

Curiosity on my part.

Yes, Regina is an implementation of REXX, written by Mark Hessling, the author of THE, and widely available on Linux. The package is usually named Regina-REXX, regina-rexx or rexx-regina to differentiate it from an unrelated mathematical software also named Regina.

There are other REXX implementations as well. E.g., ooRexx is available in OpenSUSE and Arch AUR.

I used REXX on the Linux platform in the past but phased over to BASH. This happened so long ago that I cannot remember all the reasons for making the switch.

On a mainframe REXX programs can have Pipes intermixed with the REXX code. "Pipes" meant CMS Pipelines which is similar to (but more powerful than) Linux pipes.

On the Linux platform REXX programs can have Linux pipes intermixed with the REXX code but it is clumsy.

This must be mentioned: my programming is strictly recreational so my evaluation of the two languages might be different from that of a professional.


Daniel B. Martin

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Yeah, I used it on mainframes, and arexx on the Amiga back in the day. I can't remember it being on AIX, but it might be. It was ok as far as scripting languages go (and much nicer than CLIST on mainframes/TSO) but we have perl/python on UNIX so I guess it never caught hold over here in 'NIXland.

The concept of being able to 'address' commands to other applications was nice, but they had to support it, and not many ever did, which is a shame.

Man.. that brings back some memories. It's been around for a while. It was alternate scripting/macro language on VM/CMS back when I was banging away on that (in the '80s). I never saw much need for it as EXEC2 did everything I needed to do at the time.

Let me guess: Someone's proposing using it in the Linux kernel? :^D

[heh] XEDIT and the IBM FORTRAN H compiler... I used to eat/sleep/dream those while working for a Univ. I had so many weird EXEC and XEDIT macros on my VM that people were afraid to touch my CMS account. I left the Univ. for a couple of years and got the same VM when I came back with my old environment intact. (Too bad I'd become a DEC guy by then and had little use for it.)

ISPF editor I can see some benefit, but REXX ?. Would take a very large thumbscrew to convince me to start using it on linux.

Or ADR/ROSCOE with its RPF programming language -- I was quite adept with that.

... On second thoughts, I think I'll stick with emacs. :)

I was talking to some guys about running COBOL in Docker and asked them what would they use if the needed a scripting language, one guy said REXX and the rest said Bash.

REXX was and still is a very interesting language in how it handles variable references which I haven't since seen in any other language. It was very solidly implemented, very flexible, and vastly superior to EXEC2. One of the earliest components of what evolved into "IRC = Internet Relay Chat" was written in REXX.

I took a REXX class back in the 90's at big computer place.

Thought it was interesting.

I hope that I didn't teach that class, Jefro ... but maybe I did.

All I can say is, "the designers of REXX impressed the hell out of me." And especially when I took a peek at the underlying implementation.

I must say that today I am very much surprised(!) that their ideas didn't gain more traction than (I think ...) they did. Or (I think ...) they should have.

REXX was also included in OS/2. I tinkered with a bit in the early to mid 90's
My feelings about OS/2. Was always superior to Windows.