Date:         Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:28:12 -0600
Reply-To:     REXX Programming discussion list <REXXLIST@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
Sender:       REXX Programming discussion list <REXXLIST@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         Doug Quale <qualed@MAIL.STATE.WI.US>
Organization: State of Wisconsin
Subject:      Re: Why REXX is not my favorite scripting language (was Re:
              regular expression matching)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Mark Schlegel wrote:
>
> pforhan@millcomm.com wrote:
> :
> : >not a part of standard REXX, since it is an abomination.)  REXX has no
> : >facilities for formatted I/O (akin to printf).  This is extraordinarily
> : >abnoxious.  The REXX SAY command is almost useless -- it can only write
> : >complete lines (no way to supress the newline!)
>
> Wrong, you can effectively surpress the NL in rexx by using charout:
>
> call charout stdout, "what you want to say"
> call charout stdout , " is this"
>
> would display
>
> what you want to say is this
>
 
Wow, did I really write "abnoxious"?  My spelling is getting worse than
I realized.
 
Unfortunately charout is not part of REXX, and it isn't available in
REXX/MVS.  It is useful to be able to do these things on particular
platforms, but sometimes you really need key features to be part of the
core language or standard libraries.
 
And, if I correct my spelling, lack of facilities for formatted output
in REXX really is obnoxious.