I am grateful for your work on this. Unfortunately, if other shops are
like mine, the programmers can't use your PCRE library in production
because it is not a vendor supported product. I did download the
previous version. And _I_ can use it in my own code for __my own__
purposes. But, then, I'm a BOFH type sysprog who is rather
unrestrained in what I can use. So long as I don't cause an outage.
And I don't use it in production. Since PCRE is for textual data, I
generally find it "better" to simply download the data that I want to
process onto my Linux desktop and manipulate it there. I'm doing that
right now with some RACF data. I will massage it to find out
information. I can then use that information to make decisions about
how to do something in RACF (setting up some values in a customer user
data field to be more precise). I will even generate the job which
will do the RACF commands that I need. But this is a "one off" and so
I can do it as I please. But I can't do it as a regularly scheduled,
production, activity. The same with using your PCRE code.

I wish that I could help with the REXX interface. But I don't have a C
license. So I'm generally not able to do much very easily. I really
don't enjoy HLASM coding as much as I used to. Just getting old and
tired, I guess.

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 7:35 AM, Ze'ev Atlas <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi All
> Of all places, I would expect a little more enthusiasm of the members of this 
> list.
>
> Let me please explain the rationale behind publishing the PCRE library on 
> z/OS.
>
> Regular expressions are available in most modern languages such as Perl, Java 
> and PHP, to mention only few (BTW, PHP is using the PCRE library for regular 
> expressions processing.)  Regular expressions are used extensively and are 
> basic part of life in programming and handling data on Linux, Unix (and by 
> extension on z/OS with USS and MVS-OE) and Windows.
>
> This capability was virtually unavailable on native z/OS and not at all for 
> grand old COBOL and PL/I.  By porting this library, i brought this awesome 
> capability into the native z/OS realm and into the LE languages 
> functionality.  And thus. I pulled COBOL and PL/I kicking and screaming to 
> the 21st century.
>
> Rexx on z/OS is an untamed beast and I do not know how to approach it.  We 
> really need volunteers for that aspect.
>
> Object Rexx (on non z/OS platform) appears to be catching up with that trend 
> and lately added a RxRegExp library.  I did not yet have a chance to look at 
> it yet, but I know that there was a Posix compliant library available for non 
> z/OS Rexx for some time.
>
> While the package in full is available on my website in both ASCII form and 
> EBCDIC XMIT libraries, all you really need may be the XMIT libraries, the 
> documentation and the license document.  There is one XMIT library missing 
> (the test cases) but I hope to add it soon and it is not crucial for working 
> with the library.
>
> I had a rough start some months ago when I first published the package (PCRE 
> 8.31) but this was my first time publishing open source on serious scale.  
> The current package is stable and available.
>
> ZA
>
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-- 
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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