I used to work on the REX project, and for a number of years
actually maintained and enhanced the compiler. If you made a support
call during a 10 year period, you had a good chance of talking to me.

REX was a Pascal program based on the original Zurich P4 Pascal compiler
(if my fading brain cells remember it right.) It produced basically
assembler
code, but as there was no assembler for the classic HP3000s, it produced
SPL code with lots of assemble statements.

When the HP PA machines came out, a project was started to change it to
produce
U-code (HP's name for basically what other people called P-code.) I even
attended
a special traning class on using HP U-code.  At the time HP was going to
allow
a small group of vendord access to it so they could get native mode speed
and
functionality. Generating U-code meant the HPs optimizers would work, and
that changes
in underlying machine architecture would automatically be used as well.

Suddenly and un-named manager at HP killed this U-code project. I never
heard a reason,
but guess they decided it was just too much trouble. We talked about trying
to then
use Splash, but everyone seemed to lose interest at this time. It still
functioned ok
in compatability mode but was limited by stack space.

REX was the best language I ever used, and I often wished I could have
ported it
to Splash and made it freeware. I still find myself writing Cobol programs
and wishing
I had REX so I could develop it in half the time, and have a much clearer
program.
REX was sort of a reduced intruction set language. It could do everything
Cobol could,
but was much faster to learn. Since it was HP3000 and Image focused, typical
programs
were much easier to develop. It had a little in common with Transact, but I
thought
it was much cleaner.




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Emerson, Tom # El Monte [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 9:49 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: A Little Help for the Lost.
>
>
> Actually, 20 years ago it would have produced SPL code -- with the
> introduction of XL machines came the need to create Pascal
> instead of SPL.
> Either way, I thought it worked quite well for what it did [and if you
> didn't have anything too strenuous to create]
>
> They also had a front-end to this called PAL, which was
> view-screen based
> and would take inputs from the user to create a REX source
> file.  Several
> [automated] compilation steps later you had pure object code
> running as a
> program -- much better than an interpreter at the time.
>

> OTOH: REXX is a language developed [I think] by IBM.  It has
> been ported to
> several platforms including OS/2, NT, win 9x, and a few other
> main/mini/micro computers that I've never worked on ;)  This
> is more of a
> command-line/scripting language, similar to VBA or the "posix shell".
>
>N