Rexx vs Perl
Heather Mills
What can Rexx do that Perl can't or not as well?
What can Perl do that Rexx can't or not as well?
Is there someplace that has a feature comparison of these two
languages?
Swifty
wrote:
>Is there someplace that has a feature comparison of these two
>languages?
I find such comparisons rather confusing. I've been using rexx for
about 30 years now and find it easy and pleasant to use.
It was designed to be simple to learn; the original manual (by the
author) is just 203 pages. The language has been extended since then,
but you can learn the original core which hasn't changed.
Over the years I've tried to learn Perl and Ruby but found them
perplexing by comparison. You also get fatigued just holding the
manuals.
I'm sure you can do a lot more in either Perl or Ruby, but it depends
what you want to do. I've written business processes in REXX and never
came across anything that I needed but couldn't do.
I find that REXX is easy to read and understand, for example:
Say date() /* Would type out 19 Dec 2010 */
If subword(date(),1,2) = '16 Sep' then say 'Happy birthday, Swifty!'
--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk
danfan46
Perl is a lot better if you want to write obsfucated code!
Perl has a lot better performance than Rexx.
Rexx is a much "cleaner" language.
Perl has CPAN with a lot of ready to use code.
Perl has more users which means Beta testing and bug fixing is sooner.
I'd use Perl in a production environment and Rexx for the fun of it.
/dg
danfan46
Easy to use and easy to expand with new classes.
/dg
Heather Mills
wrote:
>On 2010-12-19 17:32, Heather Mills wrote:
>> How does Rexx compare to Perl?
>>
>> What can Rexx do that Perl can't or not as well?
>>
>> What can Perl do that Rexx can't or not as well?
>>
>> Is there someplace that has a feature comparison of these two
>> languages?
>
>Perl is a lot better if you want to write obsfucated code!
Even better than APL?
>Perl has a lot better performance than Rexx.
Because it's compiled?
>Rexx is a much "cleaner" language.
In what sense?
>Perl has CPAN with a lot of ready to use code.
>Perl has more users which means Beta testing and bug fixing is sooner.
>
>I'd use Perl in a production environment and Rexx for the fun of it.
What about Ruby? Is it even comparable?
danfan46
> On Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:43:18 +0100, danfan46<danf...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2010-12-19 17:32, Heather Mills wrote:
>>> How does Rexx compare to Perl?
>>>
>>> What can Rexx do that Perl can't or not as well?
>>>
>>> What can Perl do that Rexx can't or not as well?
>>>
>>> Is there someplace that has a feature comparison of these two
>>> languages?
>>
>> Perl is a lot better if you want to write obsfucated code!
>
> Even better than APL?
>
>> Perl has a lot better performance than Rexx.
>
> Because it's compiled?
>
>> Rexx is a much "cleaner" language.
>
> In what sense?
The code can be written in a readable way.
When you read the code, you see what is done.
That can be accomplished in most languages of course.
>
>> Perl has CPAN with a lot of ready to use code.
>> Perl has more users which means Beta testing and bug fixing is sooner.
>>
>> I'd use Perl in a production environment and Rexx for the fun of it.
>
> What about Ruby? Is it even comparable?
Is it not enough too compare Rexx and Perl?
There are hundreds of other languages.
Each have advantages and supporters, and disadvantages perhaps.
/dg
Dave Saville
wrote:
I used to do all my scripts in Rexx, now I almost always use perl. The
main reason for me is hashes. Even with ORexx you don't have anywhere
near the same functionallity. Also, as remarked elsewhere, the chances
of you needing some obscure bit of code for the first time in the
history of the universe is remote. There is *bound* to be a module on
CPAN that does it and many times better than you could write it. HTML
parsing is a prime example. My best find was one to calculate
sunrise/sunset for a given latitude. I looked it up first and the math
is dreadful. :-)
--
Regards
Dave Saville
Swifty
<spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>For more general programming, regex matching makes life a lot easier.
Absolutely. I came across a regex implementation somewhere in my rexx
ramblings (it would have been in IBM Object Rexx or Open Object Rexx)
but its matches were inexplicably completely different from what I was
used to (fairly simple regex stuff; I have to refer to the manual for
anything other than the most basic stuff).
So I gave up on that. At one point I was even contemplating
implementing my own simple regex engine in rexx. Since I know so
little regular expressions syntax, it wouldn't have been hard.
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
> On Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:17:54 -0500, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
> >For more general programming, regex matching makes life a lot easier.
>
> Absolutely. I came across a regex implementation somewhere in my rexx
> ramblings (it would have been in IBM Object Rexx or Open Object Rexx)
> but its matches were inexplicably completely different from what I was
> used to (fairly simple regex stuff; I have to refer to the manual for
> anything other than the most basic stuff).
>
> So I gave up on that.
There are, I think, various re helper programs available, which allow you to
test a regex, and let you see how different parts of an expression match
different parts of a text.
I presume you're aware that there's several flavours of regex engine
available? Eg apps oftne say they use the perl engine, or something else -
can't remember what. Some engines can be configured to use either common
syntax or even an arbitrary one, as far as I remember.
> At one point I was even contemplating implementing my own simple regex
> engine in rexx. Since I know so little regular expressions syntax, it
> wouldn't have been hard.
Hmm. Unless you really do mean little more than simple wildcard support, I
think you're wrong there. Short of taking a known re implementation in eg C
and translating it to rexx, I don't think it'd be easy at all.
--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.
Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsre...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "aaa" by "284".
wolfgang.riedel
> On 2010-12-19 17:32, Heather Mills wrote:
>
> Perl has CPAN with a lot of ready to use code.
At least for OS/2 there were LEO and Hobbes with Rexx libs/modules/
pgms for almost
everything.
Nowadays a good starting point to look for resources may be
http://www.rexxla.org/links/
Greetings, Wolfgang
PS.: I may be one of the few persons, who have learned to read, but
not to write perl.
It's just awful!
On the other hand, Rexx accompanied me from MVS via OS/2 (where it
could do things,
that perl only could do with a little help from Rexx - WPS, SOM etc:
man perlos2)
to Unix and Windows.