[Info-vax] Unix and DCL shells

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/10/2024 5:00 AM, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:11:24 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On 9 Jan 2024 23:57:19 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> Oh, I've examined the documentation (and books) in detail. But by that
>>> time, I'd been using REXX for years, and it does all I need. It's
>>> surprisingly powerful.
>>
>> I had a look at the Wikipedia overview
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx>, and I see it gushes a lot over the
>> PARSE statement, but it doesn’t seem to have regular expressions. Is
>> that overview out of date?
> 
> REXX is a sparse language. But it has lots of libraries, and there are
> regexp libraries.
> 
> Personally, I think regexps are overrated! And I first started using them
> in 1975.

There is the famous quote:

<quote>
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use 
regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
</quote>

It is an obscure syntax.

But it is powerful and very widely available (small differences but
available), so my conclusion is: learn it.

Arne