Actually, CLIST can do some things that REXX can't, although on balance I'll take REXX over CLIST, EXEC or EXCE2.
I find REXX much friendlier than any Unix shell, although bash certainly has some things that REXX needs. IBM: why haven't you added all of the ANSI extensions to REXX? See my "Safe REXX" article from the last century. I'm relying heavily on Perl, because of regexen and CPAN, and there are many things that are much cleaner in REXX. Add to your bad list: looks a lot like PL/I, but PL/I habits will get you in trouble. And, no, SIGNAL is not a goto and is a booby trap for the unwary. And, yes, it is long past time for IBM to upgrade TSO REXX to OOREXX, or at least ANSI REXX. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Kirk Wolf <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 11:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Heretic alert: I really detest TSO REXX (the language) Yeah, I said it. I remember how fond I was of REXX when I first discovered it VM/CMS in the 1980s, when big hair and mullets were also great. Sure, on the surface it seems like a user friendly scripting language, but IMO that is only true if you compare it to JCL, CLIST, RPGII, and Windows "BAT". It does look much easier than the classic Unix shell, but not so much in practice. I recognize that many here have learned it really well and don't have to think about all of the pitfalls and landmines. But please don't try to tell new mainframers who have learned modern scripting languages how nice it is :-) The good: - it is on every z/OS system, and it has a good set of system interfaces ("environments") - it does have case-sensitive variable names, which maybe some people don't like ;-) The bad: - a single data type (string) - limited control flow statements; lack of short-cut boolean expressions - compound variables - the only data structure you'll ever need? - weird handling of undefined/omitted variables/args - variable name scopes? - packages/namespaces/libraries? - purports to follow the principle of "least surprise", but I often find the opposite - slow (although that really isn't a language criticism) Kirk Wolf Dovetailed Technologies http://secure-web.cisco.com/1sCovw_caeZCTiKKtwKM6KRqfReM5pqylWtuvk1WwFDPKPskPZj1hu1_JrFVbwdNQfWij5DzJGZ4GVtjiTXmvZJJHbxLgTfQem4eYseB1CJo1utY4r-0e5vb9C6Duqr9ipvP1TNN5Cf1JYJA4Pqw_VOPfp-9h5bJN-nXwm8QMFXoFe3pxze54XYnZAh0bsuT2S0_B0loJk6BL-cnC8QUoyYo2IyZM1iqTrJLeMUxQ3uLO8lpTjvbnaF51EfzDkdp-E4oEnOBN03c0CPFarq_bG9q0ooIn0E7x7dcozCPHAi2V7--SBonkXru9OIaeQcQwciQ7Pkz33s2xUeqv0fN3uGeMe9UBnucjGHZkPwJ7FR9ekbl9Ele2EAYre-rnt-Y2NjrWRDBKjNmUJQEELWilx84BgJh7GJ_ghLn4pmAs7yUz3-93Ux4PuFrABtv_E2dG/http%3A%2F%2Fdovetail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
