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TechTalk: What is REXX?

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From: Dan Dalessandro To: All

This message may get strange looks but, what is REXX? I see it mentioned in just about every issue but never took the time to investigate.

From: Ernie Malaga To: Dan Dalessandro

REXX is a programming language, and it is available on every AS/400 because it's part of OS/400. You don't have to purchase or license it.

REXX is not compiled-it's interpreted, like OCL on the S/36 and BASIC on many systems. This means that it runs slower than compiled languages.

REXX has an extremely rich set of string manipulation functions, unrivaled by any other languages I know or know of. Even C's string functions can't match REXX's.

REXX has almost no database I/O operations to speak of, however; you can only read sequentially, and there's no mechanism to detect end-of-file situations that I'm aware of.

If you want to know more about REXX, don't buy the IBM books. They're expensive and not very well written. Instead, go to your local bookstore and purchase a REXX book for PCs. It will cost you a fraction of the IBM books, will have better examples, and 95 percent of it will apply to the AS/400. Then start experimenting with the STRREXPRC command, the command you use on the AS/400 to run a REXX procedure ("program") you may have written.

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