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List of Names
Short Form
Full Form
-
Rexx
- Language type:
- Description:
Rexx is an block-sturctured
procedural language commonly used for
application development, integration,
and extension.
Designed primarily for ease of use,
the Rexx language is weakly typed and
has a very plain, uncomplicated syntax.
Rexx supports strings, numbers, and
associative arrays as its data structure.
The numbers can be unlimited-precision.
The language includes conventional
control structures: if-then-else, counted
and free loops, and a case statement form.
It supports recursive functions, and also
supports evaluation of run-time code (like
Lisp, Perl, and many other interpreted
languages.)
Some commercial implementations of Rexx
support the creation of GUIs and interaction
with database management systems.
An ANSI standard for Rexx is available,
the standard was created by the X3J18 committee
and is designated X3.274-1996. A pre-pub
draft is available on-line from
here.
Various superset dialects of Rexx exist, providing
a variety of extensions: ObjectRexx supports
object-oriented programming, and NetRexx
provides a variety of network interface and
I/O facilities.
Both free and commercial implementation of
Rexx are available. Most are interpreters
only, but a few Rexx compilers also exist.
Information about the language is freely
available from IBM, various academic
institutions, and the Rexx Language Association.
- Origin:
M. Cowlishaw, IBM, 1979 - 1985.
- See Also:
- Remarks:
Rexx was originally invented as a sophisticated
command language for IBM mainframe environments (MVS, CMS).
It has gained some popularity as a programming
language with expressive power and convenience.
In the Windows environment it competes with
Visual Basic, Java, Perl, and Tcl. In the UNIX
environment is competes with Perl, Tcl, Java,
and various shells.
On IBM OS/2 Rexx is probably the
most popular scripting language.
- Links:
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- Date:
- Sample code:
/* Subroutine example from Ian Collier's tutorial, */
/* stand-in until I get a more extensive example. */
/* Calculate factorial x, that is, 1*2*3* ... *x */
parse pull x .
say x"!="factorial(x)
exit
factorial: /* calculate the factorial of the argument */
procedure
parse arg p
if p<3 then return p
else return factorial(p-1) * p
Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some
examples copyright of their respective authors. Some
technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to
copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.
Comments on this dictionary, corrections and suggestions, are all welcome.
Please use email, the address is ziring@home.com
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Dictionary and script maintained by Neal Ziring, last major modifications 3/18/98. Most recent
additions to dictionary and master list, 1/00.