Re: CL/REXX Was: valid 5250 character set

Hello Jim,

Am 03.06.2022 um 18:07 schrieb Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

A) REXX while a great language is all but dead except maybe on the mainframe. Only a very few in the POWER community even knows it exists.

Outside of the IBM world, virtually nobody knows about RPG. According to your logic, RPG is thus all but dead. Q. e. d. :-)

We all know, it isn't. It has it's niche and this niche might even be larger than the one /360 assembler programmers lure within. Is that dead?

B) Who will understand it, maintain it, debug it, etc. etc.? Again a worthwhile addition to the list of potential solutions, but not practical in its application.

I think, REXX is relatively easy to understand, and it has no overhead when being called from the CL environment. I remember shoveling data between PASE and CL environment is said to take a considerable CPU overhead toll. (Can't find a written reference to that, currently.) I have not yet adopted REXX myself, but it's on my ToDo-List. So I can't answer your other questions.

I'd not rule REXX out just because it's perceived dead. We had that "dead" discussion for 5250 screens. ;-) It's a tool, it's there and as such, why not use it when it's beneficial? At least you're not required to manually check for security updates.

:wq! PoC