On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 10:41 AM, Kirk Wolf <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yeah, I said it. I remember how fond I was of REXX when I first discovered
> it VM/CMS in the 1980s, when big hair and mullets were also great.
>
> Sure, on the surface it seems like a user friendly scripting language, but
> IMO that is only true if you compare it to JCL, CLIST, RPGII, and Windows
> "BAT". It does look much easier than the classic Unix shell, but not so
> much in practice.
>
> I recognize that many here have learned it really well and don't have to
> think about all of the pitfalls and landmines. But please don't try to
> tell new mainframers who have learned modern scripting languages how nice
> it is :-)
>
> The good:
>
> - it is on every z/OS system, and it has a good set of system interfaces
> ("environments")
> - it does have case-sensitive variable names, which maybe some people don't
> like ;-)
>
> The bad:
>
> - a single data type (string)
> - limited control flow statements; lack of short-cut boolean expressions
> - compound variables - the only data structure you'll ever need?
> - weird handling of undefined/omitted variables/args
> - variable name scopes?
> - packages/namespaces/libraries?
> - purports to follow the principle of "least surprise", but I often find
> the opposite
> - slow (although that really isn't a language criticism)
>
TSO REXX needs to be allowed to quietly retire to a placid village
somewhere; turning the reigns of scripting on TSO & UNIX to "Object
Oriented REXX" (oorexx). Of course OOREXX would need to be enhanced with
the addition of ADDRESS TSO and ADDRESS SYSCALL as well as some way to do
I/O to z/OS data sets. I don't really care for EXECIO, but it is
acceptable.
ref: http://oorexx.org/docs/rexxref/book1.htm
>
> Kirk Wolf
> Dovetailed Technologies
> http://dovetail.com
>
>
--
We all have skeletons in our closet.
Mine are so old, they have osteoporosis.
Maranatha! <><
John McKown
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