REXX is platform independent Scripting Language. It uses extensively in mainframe.
It is a free flow language.
Let us take a simple program (Reference “Informit”)
/* GUESSING GAME -- try guessing the randomly-generated number */ do while end_this_game <> ’N’ the_number = random(1,5) /* generate the random number */ say "I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 5, what is it?" pull your_guess say "You entered: " your_guess if your_guess = the_number then say ’You guessed it! The number was: ’ the_number else do say ’Sorry, the number was: ’ the_number say ’We should have bet on this!’ end say ’Try again? [Y or N]: ’ pull end_this_game end
The above program is self-explanatory.
Points:
- REXX program always starts with /*…….*/ (No problem you can span comments in multi lines)
- Variables initialization is optional
- There is number of error handling conditions available. Some of them are: novalue, error, failure, halt, notready, syntax, lastdigits
- PULL-means in Cobol it is Accept. Say- in Cobol it is Display.
In my next posts I will give details from starting of REXX and its usage in mainframe.
