REXX was certainly a great improvement over EXEC, EXEC 2 and *TSO* CLIST, but there is no "VM CLIST". There are a couple of edge cases where REXX is missing something present in the old languages, e.g., integration with the TSO stack mechanism.
As for the PL/I likeness, it is more of a hindrance than a help; lures you into expecting PL/I behavior in cases where the semantics are very different. Don't forget SELECT, which came from PL/I and helps to make code more readable. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of scott Ford <idfli...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2019 7:56 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Unreadable code (Was: Concurrent Server Task Dispatch issue multitasking issue) You can argue anything is or isn’t , I think what matters is ease of usage , platform interchangeability , I.E., Linux and windows for Oorexx. The advent of rexx, I started on VM/SP 3 , I think, was a huge improvement over the old VM clist language. The old clist to me being more clunky . Rexx was easy to learn and have up and running . This was a g pus at least for me. The PL/1 likeness is the “ if then do” , I wrote a bunch of PL/1 on OS/VS2/HASP, back to n the dark ages. On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 10:18 PM David Crayford <dcrayf...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 11/01/2019 10:27 am, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > > Semicolons, yes, but: > > do <=> { > > end <=> } > > switch <=> SELECT > > ... > > I think Rexx got much of its lexical flavor from PL/I. But that's easy > for > > me to say becase I don't know PL/I. > > From Wiki "Rexx was also intended by its creator to be a simplified and > easier to learn version of the PL/I > <https://secure-web.cisco.com/1KuZ2_QAj-lIiZ0vsi9R7gP9mYWbAUVCS6akTtgvJS-DnqovyZRmdGrqGoMWgm7EwiLqZ8ej0c17Tofsf9DD5B582eGmRcLPeB42We7J2CwsGr27oIgC9UZc9zBK4j2mZxtNpOlmdC4InFhP0Xlye-VZLwEL-IgqK4BhM7QZYJj9FCOjyMK9hbLcfq--Wa4hX_N52qg_DnWzLP2tmZWLd3HeVV-waWkQRLA7SqKrJ6501hh0ixJeOyKM4Wma75IglYYp0kYXcZEeTzWomm0sEj0c12DFY6uQMUS33RRK0HmEdAe4HJoBZVOX5LMgjOGI24msdRSkQCUXw3et8tcAawG9lWNzi1WMy0UNhmb1uJmnvtS6lMJnCAXMBQcfss45S1rTrUmhqplcGA_F4zr3nCXWxp1IbgUoT2mfZgTiXGAF2Y_jm3l7SzYcoVvwOhTl3/https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPL%2FI> > programming language" > > I agree with Steve. There is very little similarity between REXX and C. > A case in point would be short circuit evaluation which is fundamental > to C and > sadly lacking in REXX. There are some similarities between a language > like JavaScript and C because of the lineage of most curly bracket > languages. > > > >> On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 6:48 PM Steve Smith wrote: > >> > >>> REXX is lot like C? I can't think of anything they have in common > beyond > >>> the minimum basics of any procedural language. > > Bless Rexx for making ';' and newline very nearly interchangeable, in > contrast > > to POSIX Shell script, where they aren't. > > > > -- 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 > -- Scott Ford IDMWORKS z/OS Development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
