Re: text equation

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Jim wrote:
>Perl is a parser type language found on *nix systems.
>*nix refers to unix, linux, and the like.

Perl is not limited to the unix-style systems.  Ports
are available for practically all commonly used systems,
even such obscure OS's as W98 and WNT.  Perl is portable
to any system that has a C compiler.

>The AS/400
>apparently also has a Perl interpreter.  It is not really
>a high level language, and is interpreted.

Not a high-level language?!?  (Was that a troll?)  Perl
can be used to right powerful programs in a very concise
form.  Isn't that the definition of a high-level language?

>According to another message on this thread, it seems
>that REXX is what you actually want to use in this case.

Definitely.  IMHO, not enough AS/400 programmers really
appreciate what's available to them.  Rexx is fairly
powerful and easy to learn and very good for string
manipulation.  (Those of you lucky enough to still use
OS/2 have easy access to some good Rexx documentation
available with that system.)

Rexx and Perl have much in common - both are typeless
interpreted languages.  However, as good as Rexx is for
string manipulation, Perl has much more substantial
pattern matching functions that leave Rexx miles behind.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


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