Rexx Programmer's Reference

Chapter 20. Regina

Overview

Regina is the most widely used free Rexx interpreter. Its use is truly worldwide: it was originally developed by Anders Christensen of Norway in the 1990s and is today enhanced, maintained, and ported by Mark Hessling of Australia and Florian Große-Coosmann of Germany. Regina's popularity is well deserved. It meets all Rexx standards and goes well beyond them in the features and functions it offers. It runs on nearly any platform. Some of its many advantages were presented in the first chapter, when we described why it is an excellent choice of Rexx interpreter.

This chapter explores those aspects of Regina that go beyond the ANSI standards to give you a feel for the extra features of this product. Since Regina meets all Rexx standards, of course, everything from the tutorials of the earlier chapters of this book apply to your use of Regina. In fact, all the sample scripts to this point were tested with Regina in its role as a standards-compliant Rexx interpreter. The goal here is a bit different. This chapter specifically explores the Regina features that go above and beyond the Rexx standards.

First, we'll cover the advantages of the Regina interpreter. Then we'll discuss when and why it may be appropriate to employ the features of Rexx interpreters that extend beyond the standards, and what the downsides of this decision are. Different projects have different goals, and you want to be appraised as to when using interpreter features beyond those of the ...