Chapter 26. r4 and Object-Oriented roo!
Overview
Kilowatt Software offers two free Rexx interpreters. r4 is a classic Rexx interpreter that meets the TRL-2 standard and is at language level 4.00. roo! is an object-oriented superset of r4. It offers a complete object-oriented Rexx programming language. Both r4 and roo! run under all modern versions of Windows and are complemented by many add-on tools for the Windows environment. This chapter briefly overviews both.
We'll discuss the advantages to r4 and roo! as a pair of Rexx interpreters from the same company. Then we'll briefly describe the installation process for the products. After this, we'll describe some of the tools that Kilowatt Software provides for both r4 and roo! These help developers leverage Windows features with much less effort than would otherwise be required.
The heart of the chapter is the quick overview of roo!'s object-oriented scripting features. Object-oriented programming is an approach many feel dramatically raises developer productivity. roo! supports all object-oriented features, while retaining full compatibility with standard Rexx. We'll describe the additions roo! makes to classic Rexx and explain how they support object-based scripting.
Advantages
r4 and roo! are two different products from the same vendor. Nevertheless, they share many of the same tools and charcteristics. Here are some key features of r4 and roo!:
Windows-oriented — The products are customized for Windows, with easy installation and developer ...
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