ets@wrkgrp.uucp (Edward T Spire) (10/11/90)
Here's a cross posting from comp.lang.rexx that I thought this group might like to respond to. I've already responded privately, and I've seen one other public response go by. I'll cross post any summary posting that the original author posts after the discussion on that list dies down. Reply to the original author, if you like. ========================================================================== Ed Spire email: ets@wrkgrp.com (on uunet) The Workstation Group voice: 800-228-0255 6300 River Road, Suite 700 or 708-696-4800 Rosemont, Illinois 60018 fax: 708-696-2277 ===== original message fragment from comp.lang.rexx ====================== From uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!isi.edu!gremlin!charming!jpl Fri Sep 14 11:24:47 CDT 1990 Article 92 of comp.lang.rexx: Path: wrkgrp!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!isi.edu!gremlin!charming!jpl >From: jpl@charming.nrtc.northrop.com (Jeffrey P. Lankford <jlankford>) Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx Subject: Re: need a REXX-flavored version of getopt() Summary: Postings should be more specific re: REXX operating environment Message-ID: <9493@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com> Date: 14 Sep 90 02:19:28 GMT References: <90239.171548BOYDJ@QUCDN.BITNET> <147@rufus.UUCP> <LFK.90Sep10210746@key.key.amdahl.com> <176@rufus.UUCP> Sender: news@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com Reply-To: jlankford@nrtc.northrop.com Distribution: comp Organization: Northrop Research & Technology Center Lines: 126 Now here's a question (reply directly and i might post summary) for all those folks looking for REXX interpreter/compiler for Unix. Why? When you could use Bourne shell, or csh, or ksh, or tcsh (or *sh) (and all the Unix commands expr, awk, sed), why use REXX? I can't imagine any hefty REXX applications being ported without modification to a different environment (say CMS to Unix), and trivial applications could easily be re-written. REXX without extensions would make a lousy Unix command interpretter (no pipes or i/o redirection or job control or ...) and if the REXX application isn't a command script, but more a string processing application, why not use awk? Jeff Lankford Northrop Research and Technology Center 213/544-5394 One Research Park, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90274 Newsgroups: Comp.lang.rexx Subject: Cross-postings from Unix-REXX discussion list. Here's a couple of items that follow the recently posted summary by J. Lankford regarding REXX in the Unix environment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Oct 90 10:09:12 EDT From: Tom True <uunet!pucc.bitnet!TDTRUE> Subject: Why REXX in Unix? REPLY TO 10/08/90 10:02 FROM ets@WRKGRP.UUCP "Ed Spire, The Workstation Group": Cross posting from Comp.lang.rexx re: Why REXX in Unix?? Here's another point for the discussion of why one would want REXX under Unix: REXX handles arbitrary data, regardless of its content. Although I'm not a Unix expert (I've been programming under it for the past 18 months), I don't believe this is true of most of the common, interpreted languages available under Unix. For instance, we had to process datafiles that used binary data in the header to describe the location of various fields. It looked rather straightforward to do in REXX; when we gave it to our Unix guru however, he wrote a C program to process the data and then further massaged it with awk. Tom True Princeton University TDTRUE@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU (609) 258-6064 P.s. Actually the sensitivity of many Unix tools to the kind of byte being processed is one of the more annoying features of Unix . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Oct 90 11:30:28 PDT From: My Watch Has Windows Mike Meyer <uunet!decwrl.dec.com!mwm> Subject: Re: Why REXX in Unix? >> For instance, we had to process datafiles that used binary data >> in the header to describe the location of various fields. It >> looked rather straightforward to do in REXX; when we gave it to >> our Unix guru however, he wrote a C program to process the data >> and then further massaged it with awk. This is SOP on Unix. If something is binary and you want to manipulate it, you write a short C program to dump the data as ascii text, one record per line, with appropriate field separators. You then use the standard tools to manipulate that data. Whether this is easier than doing everything in Rexx is pretty much a wash. The C program will be slightly harder than doing the equivalent in Rexx, but both are a matter of getting fields and conversions right. After that, processing with the Unix tools is slightly easier than with Rexx, mostly because iteration over the records is automatic, and the string parsing facilities of the Unix tools are more powerful. One of the things I've taken to doing when investigating a new language is to do some of the exercises in Bentley's "Programming Pearl's" books (a profiler is SOP). For the most part, Rexx makes doing things simple and straightforward. However, the resulting code is invariable longer than Unix tools code to do the same, for those same reasons. <mike