While there's no ambiguity, using VALUE or WITH as a variable name is definitely bad form.
FWIW, I prefer the more verbose keyword(values) syntax of PL/I. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2025 3:57 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: REXX say External Message: Use Caution On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 14:02:18 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: >For extra (perverse) fun, consider environments named ADDRESS or VALUE: > >address address > or >address value(value) >! > address value expression is ambiguous in BNF. It can mean either: Issue the command "expression" in the environment named "value" or: make the value of "expression" the new environment name. However, REXX customarily applies "common sense" rules, and makes VALUE a keyword. If I had been emperor of the REXX Universe, I would have provided only two forms: ADDRESS symbol [command] and ADDRESS ( expression ) [command] -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
