One thing I like about "awk" and "PERL" is that I can easily script them
from the UNIX command line. "awk" has an implicit read loop. PERL has the
-n switch to force an implicit read loop. I would love something similar
for REXX. Especially when invoked from the UNIX shell, but even from the
TSO command line. In both cases, the command line could take a list of
input datasets (TSO) or files (UNIX) to process. A simple REXX, based on
PERL, example might be:
rexx -n -e 'say $_;' some.dsn.or.file
This would simply print every line in the "some.dsn.or.file" to the screen.
I used the PERL switches of "-n" to tell REXX to loop over every line in
the input, assigning the entire like to the $_ variable (again from PERL)
and the "-e" to specify the statement(s) to execute. Like PERL, this REXX
should accept multiple "-e" switches and collect them together, in order,
to create the actual REXX script. A couple more examples might be:
rexx -n -e 'say $_' -e 'say "has "words($_)" words in it." some.dsn.or.file
or even:
rexx -n -e 'say $_;say "has "words($_) words in it.";' some.dsn.or.file
IMO, for TSO the "some.dsn.or.file" would default to the normal TSO default
of a DSN (possibly prefixed) but would accept a UNIX file if the first
character is a forward slash: e.g. /etc/inetd.conf
For UNIX, "some.dsn.or.file" would default to a UNIX file, unless prefixed
by a double forward slash. E.g. "//'sys1.maclib(read)'" or "//pds.cntl(member)"
which would be prefixed by the UNIX ${LOGNAME}.
Oh, without the -n switch the command would not have any implied I/O and so
would need an explicit loop & do the parameter parsing itself. Otherwise it
would just do the one statement like:
rexx -e 'SAY "Hello World";'
Who knows, maybe I should write this myself. But, honestly, it is difficult
to get interested in much of anything anymore.
--
People in sleeping bags are the soft tacos of the bear world.
Maranatha! <><
John McKown
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