&NRSTR() and &STR() are just CLIST quoting mechanisms.you; REXX doesn't need them because of a fundamentally different syntax.
The "apostrophe catastrophe;" got worse since OS/VS2 R3.6. What I miss about XEDIT is the combination of prefix macros and SET PENDING. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Paul Gilmartin [0000042bfe9c879d-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu] Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2023 9:36 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: XEDUT vs. ISPF (was: Typo ...) On Sat, 20 May 2023 08:55:54 +0100, Jack Zukt wrote: > ... It was helish doing the transition to ISPF and CLIST. > I started with ISPF/CLIST, berore TSO REXX. I never wrote an ISPF Edit macro in CLIST. I don't forgive CLIST for its apostrophe catastrophe; seven consecutive apostrophes were not unusual. CLIST and CMS EXEC have a "modal execution" facility which REXX lacks, a sort of instream data akin to POSIX shell's "<<delimiter". CMS Pipelines met the need with BEGOUTPUT delimiter. I never understood &STR. I'm glad REXX does without it. I suppose CLIST mavens have very clever uses for its lexical complexity. Sometimes I wonder whether its lexical analyzer is Turing conplete, but I don't need it. > ... I still find VM help much better than MVS's. > It used to be even better. When I first encountered CMS, HELP used the conventional command name search, so HELP alias-name ... would show help for the associated command. inexplicably, that ability was regressed in later releases. > ... One of the first things that I >do when starting on a new MVS system is to put an edit macro named QQ on >the SYSPROC or SYSEXEC concatenation, so that I do not have to write >CANCEL. I really do not like having that on a pfkey. Too much grief because >of that. > +1. I never create a shortcut for "de'ete". >I find that XEDIT environment capabilities permit us to tailor our working >environment far more than ISPF but, as always, I think that has more to do >with our path than with the products themselves. > I have written an interactive application using XEDIT as a display driver. Reserved lines relative to top, middle, and bottom of screen are precious. Couldn't imagine that in ISPF. If I disconnect a terminal during an XEDIT session and reconnect with a different terminal geometry, XEDIT politely refreshes the screen with the new geometry. Why doesn't ISPF do that? Can an XEDIT macro reside in a BFS file? -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
