The company I work for uses a configuration control system written in Rexx. It is a GUI application that enables a user to manage configuration control of items stored in CVS, RCS or MS Visual SourceSafe.
Versions of applications can be compared, even across different source code control systems.
It interfaces to an extract our change control system data stored in MySQL.
On Windows it allows version numbers to be inserted into Word documents when they are released.
Unfortunately there are a few glaring errors with the O'Reilly chart regarding Rexx. First is the roots of Rexx on the O'Reilly chart are from csh and awk (these languages have nothing to do with Rexx), but on the original chart from Éric Lévénez, it correctly states the roots of Rexx from PL/1. The second item missing is the 1996 ANSI Standard. Other languages have ANSI standard milestones, but not Rexx? It IS the only ANSI standard scripting language. Why the arrow for Rexx doesn't continue is also odd; I just released 3.3 of the ANSI standard Regina Rexx Interpreter in May 2004. Apart from these errors its good to see Rexx where it should be; ON TOP!!!:-)
Its a shame that people who write articles like this make general sweeping statements that are completely false.
When someone did, unexpectedly, take this paper and translate it into a working Lisp interpreter, numbers certainly weren't represented as lists; they were represented in binary, as in every other language.
Rexx does not store numbers in binary, it stores them as decimal numbers, just the way that humans deal with numbers. This is why Rexx is one of the few languages that can actually do simple maths accurately. Have a look at General Decimal Arithmetic.
The author's next paragraph goes on to say:
Could a programming language go so far as to get rid of numbers as a fundamental data type?
Like Rexx has had for 24 years??? It only has one datatype; a string.
Or earlier in the articale; also related to doing arithmetic without a number datatype...
Logically, you don't need to have a separate notion of numbers, because you can represent them as lists: the integer n could be represented as a list of n elements. You can do math this way. It's just unbearably inefficient.
Again he's describing Rexx, except that it is far from being unbearably inefficient.
For those who are interested in a 100-year language that has several of the features in this article, and has already made it a quarter of the way to 100 years, look at The Rexx language Association.
I'd suggest that at least the author go and have a look.
Based on the fact that my current Free Software projects contributed over the last 10 years comes to 7 projects with 10,586,400 bytes of code puts me at number 6 on the overall list, and I didn't even get a mention anywhere, leads me to conclude that these statistics are nowhere near accurate.
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The company I work for uses a configuration control system written in Rexx. It is a GUI application that enables a user to manage configuration control of items stored in CVS, RCS or MS Visual SourceSafe.
Versions of applications can be compared, even across different source code control systems.
It interfaces to an extract our change control system data stored in MySQL.
On Windows it allows version numbers to be inserted into Word documents when they are released.
The application runs on Windows, X11 and OS/2.
Unfortunately there are a few glaring errors with the O'Reilly chart regarding Rexx. :-)
First is the roots of Rexx on the O'Reilly chart are from csh and awk (these languages have nothing to do with Rexx), but on the original chart from Éric Lévénez, it correctly states the roots of Rexx from PL/1.
The second item missing is the 1996 ANSI Standard. Other languages have ANSI standard milestones, but not Rexx? It IS the only ANSI standard scripting language.
Why the arrow for Rexx doesn't continue is also odd; I just released 3.3 of the ANSI standard Regina Rexx Interpreter in May 2004.
Apart from these errors its good to see Rexx where it should be; ON TOP!!!
Sorry, I should have said "Again he's describing a feature of Rexx,..." ie a separate notion of numbers.
When someone did, unexpectedly, take this paper and translate it into a working Lisp interpreter, numbers certainly weren't represented as lists; they were represented in binary, as in every other language.
Rexx does not store numbers in binary, it stores them as decimal numbers, just the way that humans deal with numbers. This is why Rexx is one of the few languages that can actually do simple maths accurately. Have a look at General Decimal Arithmetic.
The author's next paragraph goes on to say: Could a programming language go so far as to get rid of numbers as a fundamental data type?
Like Rexx has had for 24 years??? It only has one datatype; a string.
Or earlier in the articale; also related to doing arithmetic without a number datatype... Logically, you don't need to have a separate notion of numbers, because you can represent them as lists: the integer n could be represented as a list of n elements. You can do math this way. It's just unbearably inefficient.
Again he's describing Rexx, except that it is far from being unbearably inefficient.
For those who are interested in a 100-year language that has several of the features in this article, and has already made it a quarter of the way to 100 years, look at The Rexx language Association.
I'd suggest that at least the author go and have a look.
Based on the fact that my current Free Software projects contributed over the last 10 years comes to 7 projects with 10,586,400 bytes of code puts me at number 6 on the overall list, and I didn't even get a mention anywhere, leads me to conclude that these statistics are nowhere near accurate.