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#! rnews 2249 bsd Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!enews.sgi.com!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!saluki-news.wham.siu.edu!slip106.termserv.siu.edu 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 Lines: 33 Sender: NNTP@slip106.termserv.siu.edu Message-ID: <22a345f1.a6d53@slip106.termserv.siu.edu> Reply-To: jimd@slip106.termserv.siu.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: slip106.termserv.siu.edu 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.