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What's NetRexx?

NetRexx is a new human-oriented programming language, designed as an effective and simple alternative to the Java language. With NetRexx, you can create programs and applets for the Java environment faster and more easily than by programming in Java. Using Java classes is especially easy in NetRexx, as the different types of numbers and strings that Java expects are handled automatically by the language.

Inspired by two very different programming languages, Rexx and Java, NetRexx blends the easy-to-learn syntax of Rexx with the robustness and portability of the Java environment. The result is a language which is tuned for both scripting and application development, and is therefore truly general-purpose.

The initial, experimental, implementation of the language is in the form of a translator that generates Java source code; a Java compiler is then used to generate Java bytecodes (class files). NetRexx classes and Java classes are entirely equivalent -- NetRexx can use any Java class (and vice versa).

Initial measurements using the initial implementation suggest that the Java source for a typical class has approximately 35% more lexical tokens and requires 20% more keystrokes than the equivalent in NetRexx.

The NetRexx compiler (NetRexxC) is written in NetRexx, and should run on any Java platform that supports the Java toolkit and compiler (javac). By default, NetRexxC uses the javac compiler to create class files, but you can use other Java compilers if you wish (the generated Java source is accessible).

For samples (and examples of using Java classes from NetRexx), and for more formal details of the language, please see the other NetRexx documents at http://www2.hursley.ibm.com; you'll find the NetRexx packages to download there, too.

A good place to browse next is the NetRexx quick start, an overview of the language.


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NetRexx has been designed and implemented as a research project by Mike Cowlishaw, IBM Fellow, at the IBM UK Laboratories.
Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc.