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IBM's Object REXX open sourced

Press release
The Rexx language association

By Jim Apple at 2004-10-15 18:35 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6341 reads

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Great news!

There are many valid reasons not to like Rexx (strings are the major datatype, Frank!) but since I used the language heavily when I worked on an MVS system, I have a soft spot for it. It would be nice to have an open source interpreter for the language.

The interpreter is implemented in Java, right?

By Ehud Lamm at Sat, 2004-10-16 15:39 | login or register to post comments

Re: implementation

I'm pretty sure that Object Rexx is implemented in C or C++.

There are three different languages in the Rexx family: Rexx, Object Rexx and NetRexx. Rexx is the orignal. There are, at least, two open source implementation of it.

NetRexx runs on Java VMs and is freely available from IBM but not the source. Both Rexx and NetRexx languages were designed and initially implemented by Mike Cowlishaw.

Object Rexx was done by a different group within IBM but they did consult with Mike. I first used Object Rexx on OS/2. The object model for it was the same as OS/2 itself, specifically SOM. Which made it trivial to
script the OS/2 desktop and access all other SOM objects. Also it meant you could extend the desktop with an application written in Object Rexx. I think this is similar to Applescript on the Mac.

By Chad Slaughter at Tue, 2004-10-19 02:11 | login or register to post comments

OK

I guess I was confusing NetRexx and ORexx.

My own experience was with classic Rexx, by the way, so that's the dialect I am most interested in. I know several implementations are available.

By Ehud Lamm at Tue, 2004-10-19 06:36 | login or register to post comments