rony

Well, if that comes into the picture, then Object REXX would be a very good option.

---rony

rony

Well, for debugging Rexx programs the TRACE statement would be intended. E.g. insert a "TRACE ?I"
before the statement that you want to ****yze/understand and you get the intermediate results of
evaluation the Rexx statement in an interactive environment.

E.g. save and run the following Rexx program:

a=2
b=17
trace ?i
say "it is:" a*3+17

The output symbols, if in doubt, are also defined in the Rexx do***entation.

---rony

rony

Well, one thing is clear, the do***entation is actually not bad, but it is not too well do***ented
where to find it.

When IBM handed over the Object REXX source code to the non-profit SIG "Rexx Language Association"
(http://www.RexxLA.org) it also supplied the do***entation, which now has been rendered to PDF and
to HTML (http://www.oorexx.org/docs.html).

Probably 95% of the docs still applies to the OS/2 version of Object REXX as well. Just go the
homepage at <http://www.ooRexx.org>, where you find the free and opensource release of Object REXX
under the name "Open Object Rexx (ooRexx)".


E.g. the first 100 pages of the following do***ent give an introduction into Object Rexx in a
tutorial like manner (fully applicable to the OS/2 version): <http://www.oorexx.org/rexxpg.pdf> or
in HTML <http://www.oorexx.org/rexxpg/book1.htm>.
Or the entire Object REXX reference as a PDF book: <http://www.oorexx.org/rexxref.pdf>, or rendered
as HTML: <http://www.oorexx.org/rexxref/book1.htm>.

ooRexx itself is available for Linux and Windows among other operating systems (just look at the
download link on the ooRexx homepage).

HTH,

---rony

@tin.it

I may be dumb, but IMO rather than a feature, I'd call that bad design:
it adds nothing to usefulness but is just another chance for difficult to spot errors


that means : use REXX only for short and simple batch scripts ?


if it were not for the poor do***entation (even worst than the classic
REXX one) it would not be so bad compared to classic REXX...
I've been playing with it yesterday and I felt quite at ease...
classic REXX has just too many limitations like unability to return stems
or to pass stems by reference

come on... high level programming language should make life easier
rather than require a 'reverse' for each hex number


what other languages are using that paradigm... something else from the
paleolithic age ? I understand that you may like and prefer REXX to
other languages, but I think it is just because you are so accustomed
to using it, not because it is really so easy and high level...
there are plenty of other languages out there much better than REXX...

well I intended that

P.S. I do not want to start a flame, so please f****ve me if I've been
too harsh, I've nothing against you... it is just that sometimes rexx
upsets me :-)

--
bye
Alessandro

@tin.it

but classic REXX is a sort of a joke... using only stems to deal with
complex data is a nightmare, besides being quite inefficient (regarding
speed and resources)...
classic REXX does not even allow to pass stem as procedure parameters
or to return stems, you are obliged to make them global variables


only for trivial jobs


there are plenty of other scripting languages out there which do not
have such silly restrictions and which are much better than REXX

its terrificly poor compared with what you can do with python or ruby
and many other modern languages

they are just dictionaries and like every kind of dictionary you can
use anything to access its elements
and without object REXX new features, dealing with stems in structured
programs longer than 2-300 lines is a real nightmare

IMO classic REXX does nothing to promote good program structuring...
it works better as a simple sequence of statements and I guess that
at the beginning it was designed to do just that

object REXX solves many of the classic REXX problems ... I just wonder
why they did not add the ability to represent hexadecimal numbers in
a more comfortable way... they could have just added the most common
format 0xhhhhhhhh and even 0bnnnnnnnn (for base 2) without problems
as that format does not clash with any of the other kind of tokens

if it were not for its poor do***entation it won't be that bad even for producing complex programs


classic REXX is just a very old language which cannot stand in comparison
with the more modern ones which allow you to do almost everything
more easily and more quickly
I've been unfair (to the people who created it) defining it a poorly
designed language... it is just old and was not born to be a general purpose language...


thanks Alex

--
bye
Alessandro

@tin.it

yes... it happens to me too... a lot of times...
it also happens when I'm programming in C, but it regards mainly the
syntax of a declaration (e.g. how to typedef a function call) and
I can find the answer quite quickly and easily while most of times,
with REXX, things just do not work as expected and it is really hard
to understand what is going wrong... sometimes it makes you waste a lot of
time... what seems to work flawlessly in some instances completely
fails in a slightly different one

I agree with that too... interactive tracing is a bit better, but
you have to write a lot of trace on/off statements all around your
source and then comment them all once you are done
and when a variable holds a lot of data you have all those MLE
import error messages if you use PMREXX or unusable data if you are
using a command line window (i.e. the data of the variable will
delete all other useful trace data)

--
bye
Alessandro

bob martin

Can't agree with you. I've been using Rexx for almost 30 years and I love it.
I've written huge programs in it, some handling very large amounts of data.
I'm not against modern languages, I like Java and use it a lot, but for any
non-gui program that is needed quickly Rexx is an automatic choice for me.

spamgate@hotmai1.com

Well, you could always "replace" the existing functions with your own
ones. For example, without suggestion you'ld like such constructions:

/**/;Say Date();EXIT;Date: RETURN Time()

And I almost wonder why you're wondering about them adding functions,
unless in the future you are the one and only user of your REXX code.

For one, try to visit the oorexx.org-website with Netscape/2. If it's
ever going to be ported to OS/2, possibly including your RFC, will it
become "REXX MYAPP.CMD" or remain just the usual "MYAPP"? Anyway, the
website almost must contain some very important functionality because
the REXX Hyjack Team otherwise succeeded in hiding the OS/2 FAQ-line
from a common OS/2 webbrowser. Great choice, and please keep up the
good work! :-)

---

spamgate@hotmai1.com

When it comes to any speed-related problem, why use an interpreted
language anyway? B/W, but accept it or choose a better solution for
the real job.

FWIW, but you're not really explaining why you didn't agree. Substitute
your "Rexx" with "assembly", and it still means nothing. Or is your Rexx
app started about 30 years ago by you, and you're enjoying that it still
isn't finished? ;-)

---

rony

....cut...

....cut...

Not sure, what you mean. In (oo)Rexx you could always write (note the trailing 'x' and 'b' right
after the quotes embedding the string):

a="0d0a"x /* hexadecimal value for CR-LF */
b="0000110100001010"b /* binary value for CR-LF */

You could insert blanks for easier readability after bytes or nibbles, e.g.

b="0000 1101 0000 1010" /* binary value for CR-LF */


To turn any character(s), ie. string, into hexadecimal you would enter:

say a~c2x /* character-to-hexadecimal representation */

To turn any character(s) into a binary digit representation you would enter:

say a~c2x~x2b

Would this be what you were looking for?

Regards,

---rony

P.S.: Ooops, just noted that I used the Object REXX syntax by mistake (*honestly*!), so here are the
classic Rexx statements to get at the hexadecimal and binary representation of any string:

say c2x(a) /* turn string into a hexadecimal representation */
say x2b(c2x(a)) /* turn string into a binary digit representation */