Date:         Tue, 18 Nov 1997 15:32:54 -0800
Reply-To:     REXX Programming discussion list <REXXLIST@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
Sender:       REXX Programming discussion list <REXXLIST@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <nospam@GSG.EDS.COM>
Organization: EDS MS
Subject:      Re: Why REXX is not my favorite scripting language (was Re:
              regular expression matching)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Doug Quale wrote:
>
> I must seem dense, because everyone keeps claiming that REXX scripts can
> handle multiple arguments, but I don't get it.  REXX external functions
> and by extension entire scripts get passed only a single argument.
 
This was covered in another subthread, but for the benefit of those who
didn't see it, or who are curious about the syntax, the REXX function
ARG(n) will return the n'th argument and the statement
 
        parse arg template1, ..., template n
 
will parse the first n arguments with the specified templates.
 
> Unfortunately ADDRESS CMD 'DIR *' doesn't do anything useful.  The dir
> command runs and sends its output who knows where.  I need to be able to
> capture the output of the command for processing within the script.
 
Well, if it doesn't have to be portable you can always do
 
        address cmd 'DIR * >file'
 
or
 
        address cmd 'DIR * | RXQUEUE'
 
but I agree that a portable way of doing it would be nice.
 
> In
> another article Ian Collier indicated that this problem has been
> addressed by the ANSI standard.  Now I just need a REXX implementation
> that follows the standard ...
 
Did he have any information on IBM's timetable? There's a lot of nice
stuff in the standard, e.g., date conversions.
 
--
 
                        Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
                        Senior Software SE
 
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