NetRexx : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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NetRexx

IBM’s hybrid Rexx/Java language that runs on the JVM interpreter. It has operator overloading, decimal arithmetic, native string parsing, safe coercions. Mike Cowlishaw, the designer of Rexx, created it. It is quite a bit terser than Java, partly because the compiler is smart enough to figure out the types of variables on its own, and builds the declarations for you. The code is much more readable than Java, requiring far fewer nested {} and (). The compiler generates Java source code, so it is quite possible to create projects with any mixture of NetRexx and Java. Methods start with the method keyword, which makes it easier to pick out all the methods from a source code listing. Loops can be named to make it easier to see where the loop ends. You also have the powerful Rexx parse command. My main complaints with the language are:

It uses Rexx operators instead of Java ones. E.g. % means integer divide in NetRexx and modulus in Java.
If you accidentally mis-spell a variable, Rexx will just create a declaration for it. The pure Java advantage of requiring explicit declarations is that the compiler automatically catches typos.

scripting languages

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