Repository files navigation

System/370 (MVS) version of the ingeniousBRexx interpreter originallyby Vasilis N. Vlachoudis.

Currently released version isV2R5M0

REXX is a programming language designed by Michael Cowlishaw of IBM UKLaboratories. In his own words: "REXX is a procedural language that allowsprograms and algorithms to be written in a clear and structured way."

Syntactically, REXX doesn't look that different from any other procedurallanguage. Here's a simple REXX program:

/* Count some numbers */say"Counting..."doi=1to10say"Number"iend

BRexx is an open source version of the classic Rexx developed by VasilisVlachoudis of the Cern Laboratory in Switzerland. Written as an ANSI Clanguage program, BRexx is notable for its high performance. It also providesa nice collection of special built-in functions and function libraries thatoffer many extra features over most of the existing Classic Rexximplementations.

BRexx was originally written for DOS in the late eighties/early 1990s.Then,with the rise of Windows, it was revised for the 32-bit world of Windowsand 32-bit DOS. BRexx also runs under the Linux and Unix family of operatingsystems, and has a good set of functions especially written for Windows CE.Other operating systems on which it runs include: MacOS, BeOS, and theAmiga OS.

One of the outstanding features, among so many, of BRexx is its minusculefootprint. The entire product, written in C, including full documentation andexamples, takes up only a measly few hundred kilobytes. It is small enough tofit on a single, ol' school floppy diskette!

Hence, BRexx was prime for re-targeting to MVS/VM for TSO/CMS. And so it was.Recently, the BRexx Rexx Interpreter was made operational onto the MVS 3.8jplatform as BRexx/370 version V2R1M0 and it was released in April of 2019.
The MVS 3.8j (now emulated) mainframe platform which pre-dates IBM's officialrelease of TSO/CMS Rexx published initially, in the next (i.e. XA) set ofofferings of IBM mainframe OSes. However, the lack of having a Rexxsignificantly hampers the MVS 3.8j platform of not only the highly utilitarianfeatures of Rexx as the powerful glue it provides as an operating system'scommand/macro language, tying all of the vast collection of system resourcestogether programmatically, under one umbrella, but also prevents the users andthe MVS 3.8j community from taking advantage of the treasure trove of Rexx-warescripts/programs/applications that exists currently which greatly enhances theMVS 3.8j user's and MVS 3.8j community's mainframe computing experience,many-fold.

BRexx was made operational, as BRexx/370, targeting the MVS 3.8j platformby:Peter Jacob (PEJ) andMike Groβmann (MIG). BRexx/370 now providesa Rexx scripting/command language for the MVS 3.8j platform.

Full releases with install instructions are availablehere:https://github.com/mvslovers/brexx370/releases

Instalation Instructions can be foundatBREXX/370 Installation Instructions

Full documentation is available atBREXX/370 Documentation

To build BREXX/370 from source please rever to theREADME inthe build directory.

For questions and suggestions you can find us at:Moshix Discord Channel

Please also read the originalREADME.