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Peter Mutsae #1 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
When reaeding 'SAS compared to perl' an article of M. Haley (spelled correctly?) came to my mind; his articles are reprinted in a dutch computer magazine. He stated that for all administration tasks one should use REXX as it is the only one which is supported on all platforms. Now this person is quite biassed towards old fashioned (but proven) technology which is used in financial and administrative environments and I don't trust such statements a lot, but still I became curious about it. Is REXX something similar to perl, and if so how do they compare? -- _________________________________________________________________________ Peter Mutsaers. |================================================
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Fri, 03 Mar 1995 15:29:36 GMT |
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Christopher Dav #2 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
PM> When reaeding 'SAS compared to perl' an article of M. Haley (spelled PM> correctly?) came to my mind; his articles are reprinted in a dutch PM> computer magazine. He stated that for all administration tasks one PM> should use REXX as it is the only one which is supported on all PM> platforms. Except for those platforms on which it's not supported. And since it's proprietary you have to *buy* the ports for many systems. It does come with VM/CMS though :-) PM> Now this person is quite biassed towards old fashioned (but proven) PM> technology which is used in financial and administrative environments PM> and I don't trust such statements a lot, but still I became curious PM> about it. Is REXX something similar to perl, and if so how do they PM> compare? It's similar. It's basically VM-PERL (hehe ;-) though it's been ported to the Amiga and other systems. It doesn't have anywhere near the string-handling capabilities that perl does (I literally had to implement rot13 by listing the entire alphabet 4 times, because it doesn't support ranges). It's used for a lot of the same sorts of things perl gets used for, often by default, since it is the best/only script language on many systems. -- Christopher Davis | ]CALL -151
System Administrator| *3D0G EFF +1 617 864 0665 | ]CALL 768
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Fri, 03 Mar 1995 23:11:33 GMT |
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Russell Fult #3 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
Quote:
> PM> Now this person is quite biassed towards old fashioned (but proven) > PM> technology which is used in financial and administrative environments > PM> and I don't trust such statements a lot, but still I became curious > PM> about it. Is REXX something similar to perl, and if so how do they > PM> compare? >It's similar. It's basically VM-PERL (hehe ;-) though it's been ported >to the Amiga and other systems. It doesn't have anywhere near the >string-handling capabilities that perl does (I literally had to >implement rot13 by listing the entire alphabet 4 times, because it >doesn't support ranges). It's used for a lot of the same sorts of >things perl gets used for, often by default, since it is the best/only >script language on many systems. >-- >Christopher Davis | ]CALL -151
>System Administrator| *3D0G >EFF +1 617 864 0665 | ]CALL 768
It's a couple of years since I used REXX on a VM system so my experience may be out of date (Given the speed at which IBM moves, I doubt it:-) Rex did not have Regular expressions, or associtative arrays - two things that are the essence of perl. Nor did it have the direct access to system calls built in in the way perl does. Rexx is essentially general purpose macro language for some other interpreter, e.g. VM or Xedit. Rexx is OK so far as it goes, but , IMHO, not a patch on perl. BTW I saw a prerelease version of rexx on one of IBM's inhouse systems years ago, it had a nice interface for fullscreen aplications. I was most disappointed when the official release arrived with out it. Another victim of IBM's marketing machine, there were at least two VM products that would have been made redundant. Cheers, Russell. -- Russell Fulton, Computer Center, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
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Sat, 04 Mar 1995 05:27:52 GMT |
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Russell Fult #4 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
Quote:
>It's a couple of years since I used REXX on a VM system so my experience >may be out of date (Given the speed at which IBM moves, I doubt it:-) >Rex did not have Regular expressions, or associtative arrays - two >things that are the essence of perl. Nor did it have the direct access
Well things have moved in the two years since I worked on VM systems, either that or my memory has faded. Several people have pointed out that REXX *does* have associative arrays. -- Russell Fulton, Computer Center, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
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Sun, 05 Mar 1995 05:37:54 GMT |
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David Fav #5 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
REXX... reminds me of a dog, whereas Perl... reminds me of a camel. camels are good for the long haul, especially when the going gets tough, for example, in the dessert. dogs tend to run around in circles, chasing their tails, getting very little done. dogs prefer to chase rabbits than do work. (arf, arf, arf. I just couldn't resist. :-)
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Mon, 06 Mar 1995 20:40:24 GMT |
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Jack Hamilt #6 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
writes: Quote:
> PM> When reaeding 'SAS compared to perl' an article of M. Haley (spelled > PM> correctly?) came to my mind; his articles are reprinted in a dutch > PM> computer magazine. He stated that for all administration tasks one > PM> should use REXX as it is the only one which is supported on all > PM> platforms. >Except for those platforms on which it's not supported. And since it's >proprietary you have to *buy* the ports for many systems. It does come >with VM/CMS though :-)
There's a free port for education institutions from The Workstation Group, and a public domain version (which I haven't seen) called regina. Quote: >It's similar. It's basically VM-PERL (hehe ;-) though it's been ported >to the Amiga and other systems. It doesn't have anywhere near the >string-handling capabilities that perl does
No, they're just different. There are things I find easier to do in perl, and things I find easier to do in REXX. I don't have to put down one in order to like the other. Quote: >(I literally had to >implement rot13 by listing the entire alphabet 4 times, because it >doesn't support ranges).
Yes it does, with the XRANGE function, which takes two one-byte codes and returns a string consisting of all the bytes between them. I tried to think of a reasonable way to implement rot13 which would require typing in the alphabet 4 times, and couldn't. I could think of a way which required typing it in once, and a way which didn't require typing it in at all, but four times? No. It's not fair to compare good Perl coding with not-so-good REXX coding. The comparison isn't really fair anyway, because of the differences between the EBCDIC and ASCII character sets. The alphabet is in a contiguous range in ASCII, and it's not in EBCDIC. (And even in ASCII, the range is correct only for English, not for foreign languages). -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Tue, 07 Mar 1995 00:49:00 GMT |
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Christopher Dav #7 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
Jack> Yes it does, with the XRANGE function, which takes two one-byte Jack> codes and returns a string consisting of all the bytes between Jack> them. When did XRANGE appear? I know we didn't have it. Could have been the fault of the port to VM/VPS though. Jack> I tried to think of a reasonable way to implement rot13 which Jack> would require typing in the alphabet 4 times, and couldn't. I Jack> could think of a way which required typing it in once, and a way Jack> which didn't require typing it in at all, but four times? No. translate 'ABCDE...abcde...' 'N..ZA..Mn..za..m'. Or whatever the verb was, I don't remember. -- Christopher Davis | ]CALL -151
System Administrator| *3D0G EFF +1 617 864 0665 | ]CALL 768
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Tue, 07 Mar 1995 12:03:46 GMT |
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Alex Martel #8 / 8
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REXX compared to perl
: :>It's a couple of years since I used REXX on a VM system so my experience :>may be out of date (Given the speed at which IBM moves, I doubt it:-) : :>Rex did not have Regular expressions, or associtative arrays - two :>things that are the essence of perl. Nor did it have the direct access : :Well things have moved in the two years since I worked on VM systems, :either that or my memory has faded. Several people have pointed out that :REXX *does* have associative arrays. It's your memory fading: REXX has ALWAYS had associative arrays, and ONLY associative arrays (no way to declare an array that's ONLY indexed by consecutive integers, for example). They DO (or did) have problems though! The index notation is: stemname.indexvarname and it's NOT supported to say, for example: myarray.(i+1)=23, you have to say j=i+1;myarray.j=23. NO builtin is provided to sort an array in any way whatsoever, NOR to extract all of the keys defined for it! A *VERY* serious limitation in my opinion. Must have been at least six years ago that I wrote a simple 370-BAL function to do that and sent it to Mike Cowlishaw as well as posting it to IBM's internal use repository VMTOOLS (I was a researcher with IBM at the time), but Mike took no notice... It may be that either or both of these limits have been removed by now, but they were still in the REXX language definition last time I checked (the REXX def is part of IBM's SAA documents). Pity. --
CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Casalecchio, Italia Fax: ++39 (51) 6130294
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Sat, 11 Mar 1995 16:26:15 GMT |
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1. PERL & REXX (Was: PERL On UNIX)
2. FAQ 1.9 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
3. FAQ 1.9 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
4. FAQ 1.9 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
5. FAQ 1.9 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
6. FAQ 1.9 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
7. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
8. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
9. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
10. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
11. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
12. FAQ: How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
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