Configuring and Writing REXX › Designing Portable REXX Programs

Designing Portable REXX Programs

The REXX programming language, with its standard set of built-in functions, allows you to migrate your REXX programs between implementations. For example, you can migrate REXX programs between CA Automation Point and CA OPS/MVS.

When designing REXX programs for portability, keep the following points in mind:

• Command processors are generally portable between the workstation and CA OPS/MVS.

  Note: Command processors under different platforms may have additional platform-specific parameters and unique return codes.

• Invoking host commands in a REXX program can cause that program to lose portability between environments.

  REXX provides functions for determining the current host environment so that a REXX program designed for portability can trap environment-specific commands. For more information, see the section How Do CA Automation Point and REXX Communicate? in this chapter .

• Some characters are not available on both ASCII (workstation) and EBCDIC (host) platforms.

  For example, the "¬=" (not equal) operator works only on an EBCDIC platform; however, "<>" (also a not equal operator) is valid on both ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.