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IBM Object REXX for OS/2

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Object REXX for OS/2 was distributed with base operating system component of OS/2 Warp Version 4 and later releases, separate update for Warp 3.

History

Object REXX beta was shipped in 1995 as part of the IBM Developer Connection Volume 6. OREXX was part of the release of OS/2 Warp Version 4 and shortly thereafter as a download for users of OS/2 Warp Version 3 and OS/2 Warp Server Version 4. However that release proved to be something of an anticlimax, the language was not 100% backwards compatible as had been promised, breaking not only a lot of third party REXX scripts but was also incompatible even with a number of scripts supplied on the OS/2 Warp 4 CD. The visual development environment and large portions of the GUI class library IBM had shown were missing from the package after the developers of similar development environments for Classic REXX complained and threatened to withdraw all support for IBM products from the market (it turned out that a couple of other visual development environments for Classic REXX from IBM were never released for the same reason).

Version

  • 6.00 (12 Jul 1996) - included in Warp 4
  • 6.00 (21 Jul 1997)
  • 6.00 (11 Nov 1997) - Warp Fixpak 6
  • 6.00 (25 Mar 1998) -
  • 6.00 (18 May 1999) - IBM FTP Update
Known issues

Object REXX for OS/2 is known to have issues with Object Desktop, specifically some of the WPS integration features of OD clash with the Direct WPS-support of OREXX, if you do not use the direct WPS-support you can fix this by uninstalling it using "wpsinst -". There was a similar issue with DeskMan/2 but it is believed that these were fixed in the end. In either case make sure you are running the 1999 version of OREXX, it fixes a WPS integration initialisation bug that helps in both cases.

Coexistence with Classic REXX

OS/2 Warp 4 and later releases (WorkSpace on-Demand, Warp Server for e-business) shipped with both Classic REXX and Object REXX interpreters. To switch between implementations the SWITCHRX command can be used and the system will default to the alternative version to the current one at next boot. If you want to use both at the same time you can specifically call the alternative version to the one you are currently using either from a command line or from a script or batch file or you can associate different extensions to different interpreters.

It is in general recommended that Classic REXX is set as the default since most OS/2 utilities use it.

Publications

  • Object REXX Reference
  • Object REXX Programming Guide
IBM Redbooks
  • SG24-4586: Object REXX for OS/2; Rexx Bytes Objects Now or Taking the ″Oh, oh!″ out of OO (Sep 1996)
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