[HN Gopher] Consider Rexx for Scripting (2022)
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Consider Rexx for Scripting (2022)
Author : walterbell
Score : 30 points
Date : 2024-12-08 09:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (opensource.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (opensource.com)
| woodruffw wrote:
| Are the open source implementations of Rexx widely adopted? This
| article highlights them, but I don't think I've ever run across
| them. It would be interesting to hear about where these have been
| adopted, relative to other scripting languages that fill a
| similar niche (presumably mostly Python, Perl, and sh)?
|
| (Apropos of nothing else, it seems worth noting that Rexx is a
| product within IBM's suite and that this website appears to be
| owned by Red Hat, now an IBM subsidiary.)
| mdaniel wrote:
| I've found the GitHub topics to be helpful for "taking the
| pulse" type stuff https://github.com/topics/rexx or, in a more
| "shotgun" approach, finding repos that contain linguist-
| detected code
| https://github.com/search?q=language%3Arexx&type=repositorie...
| jmclnx wrote:
| Interesting the article is from Red Hat, which IBM owns :)
|
| But I should check it out, I had Rexx with DOS a long time ago
| but never looked at it.
| nocman wrote:
| That makes perfect sense to me. I've never seen anyone use Rexx
| outside of an IBM-heavy environment.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Anyone wanting to do non-trivial scripting and owning an
| Amiga from Workbench 2 onward.
| ericyd wrote:
| > All variables contain strings. If the strings represent valid
| numbers, one can perform arithmetic operations with them. This
| simple concept of dynamic typing makes all data visible and
| simplifies tracing and debugging.
|
| Interesting to see duck typing advertised as a feature. I feel
| like the programming world is going strongly in the opposite
| direction.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I love duck typing. It's amazing. REXX is more weakly typed, of
| the "stringly typed" variety.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Interesting to see duck typing advertised as a feature.
|
| Speed of development is a legitimate factor to consider when
| making a choice of language for a project.
|
| > I feel like the programming world is going strongly in the
| opposite direction.
|
| There's a concerted corporate effort to push the programming
| world in that direction. It's not born out of a particularly
| strong rationale and not backed by the kind of organic efforts
| that would actually ensure it's long term success.
|
| Meanwhile we have the technology to fully isolate every process
| on a machine from everything else on the machine. Do we use
| this? No. Instead we harass programmers to use languages based
| upon corporate tastes instead of actual engineering acumen. The
| desktop doesn't get any more secure and opening a random text
| message can destroy your life regardless of what language the
| messaging application was coded in.
|
| What are we doing?
| J_McQuade wrote:
| I only ever used ARexx on the Amiga back when I was a kid and it
| was amazingly powerful, though I'm not sure how much I'd consider
| this a function of the language itself rather than the ecosystem
| you got when all of your favourite software was built with it in
| mind.
|
| Unfortunately, an ecosystem like that doesn't really exist on the
| desktop any more, so a lot of the utility is missing. Every now
| and then I feel an urge to try to mimic the sort of thing that
| you could do in ARexx easily, only on a modern desktop, and end
| up having to cobble together some D-Bus monstrosity that is not
| nearly as fun.
| wslh wrote:
| Yes, ARexx was also something different that is more akin to
| scripting AND having Microsoft COMs for interoperability.
| Really revolutionary at that time for automation and process
| interactions.
| YZF wrote:
| I love Rexx and have used it extensively on IBM mainframes and
| PC's way back. That said it seems like the ecosystem has moved
| away from the the types of integrations where Rexx was strong. On
| IBM mainframes it was always the tight integration with things
| like CMS and XEDIT that made it great.
|
| If you're using Rexx today on e.g. MacOS or Linux I'd be
| interested in hearing how that's working for you... My goto for
| scripting these days would be Python in those environments (or
| bash).
| dhosek wrote:
| Oh man, I remember using an XEDIT+Rexx email client back in the
| day on VM/CMS that was mind blowing for its time. The stuff
| available for Unix and VMS paled in comparison.
|
| But it definitely was the tight integration with XEDIT and the
| OS that made Rexx so perfect. I don't think it would work so
| well for my modern use cases.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I had the same thought. Loved REXX for work on the 3090 I had
| an account on in college, but haven't really considered it
| much since.
| wigster wrote:
| my first program was a mastermind clone written in rexx when i
| was working the night shift on an ibm mainframe as a tape
| monkey. happy days.
| kstrauser wrote:
| No.
|
| I don't hate REXX. In fact, I had an absolutely grand time using
| AREXX to script up all kinds of bizarre things on my Amiga, like
| using the progress percent of an FTP client as the parameter to
| some image program or another (ImageFX maybe?) to generate a bolt
| of lightning that grew from one corner of the screen to the
| opposite as my modem chugged away. It was neat and I love playing
| with it.
|
| But, outside an environment like that where it was integrated
| into practically every major program running on the system, I
| wouldn't want to have to rely on it again. Programming languages
| that get rid of all the rules impose their own kind of mental
| overhead, and I'm not smart enough to be 100% detail-oriented
| 100% of the time.
|
| It was still awfully cool. AppleScript is probably the closest
| modern, widely available similar language I can think of.
| taveras wrote:
| Rexx was the favorite language of my high school programming
| teacher. I recall being surprised by the syntax being so similar
| to English text.
|
| I'd credit the language for sending me down the rabbit holes of
| programming language design, self-documenting code, and literate
| programming. :)
| chasil wrote:
| Get it into POSIX.2 (or whatever it's called these days) and I
| will take a look at it.
|
| Hopefully the language grammar can be expressed with lex and
| yacc. Not being so is a problem.
|
| Here is a way to see what is in POSIX.2:
|
| https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/ - newer
| version
|
| To navigate to that same section: Click on "Shell & Utilities"
| in the top left, then "3. Utilities" in the bottom left.
| chasil wrote:
| I don't know why, but a search on either Bing or Google for
| "posix shell" points to the older version.
|
| That's the one that I use.
|
| I also prefer the plain Apache directory list for all the
| POSIX.2 utilities, so I am definitely sticking with Bing &
| Google's recommendations.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > I don't know why, but a search on either Bing or Google
| for "posix shell" points to the older version.
|
| Probably because it's only been out for a few months. I've
| found Google is fantastic at returning Python 2.6 and
| Python 3.7 or 3.8 documentation without jumping through
| hoops in my search terms (if it lists the official
| documentation at all rather than blogs and random
| tutorials), but lousy at getting anything current. I
| imagine they have the same problem with other new material.
|
| But if you want the current documentation and the Apache
| listing format:
| https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/
| chasil wrote:
| Thanks, I have added that to my stash.
|
| Interesting that the old URL only differs by one
| character; changing the first 6 to a 7 gets the later
| list.
| TruffleLabs wrote:
| "Rexx is arguably the first general-purpose scripting language."
|
| "Arguably" sounds mean; who wants to argue?!?!
|
| I would say there are compelling uses. Being a "first general
| purpose" one? Large claim that is up for a conversation. :)
| talideon wrote:
| These days, Lua is a better alternative. Rexx isn't a bad
| language, but it's very dated. It's better than recommending
| BASIC, but only marginally. We have better alternatives these
| days.
|
| Also, are there any decent embeddable Rexx interpreters around?
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