RexxBOS Functions

RexxBOS, OS/2 Rexx library providing complete system interface.

The RexxBOS library gives the REXX programs an ultimate control over the OS/2 control program, keyboard, mouse, and display devices previously available only to the programs written in C, Pascal or Assembler. The library can be called from the OS/2 system interpreter REXX and can augment the Visual REXX products from Watcom, Hockware or IBM. More than a hundred comprehensive RexxBOS functions combine features of hundreds OS/2 APIs. They give REXX programmers power to benefit from the wealth of the OS/2 features including:

• operating system and hardware configuration
• file management
• session, process and thread control
• event, mutual exclusive and muxwait semaphores handling
• queues and pipes interface
• shared memory control
• exception management
• extended attribute manipulation
• ASCII INI file handling
• high performance input/output
• job scheduling
• virtual input/output (OS/2 windows and full screen)
• keyboard management
• mouse control

The RexxBOS library is designed to:

• Ease development of client/server applications in REXX using advanced OS/2 multitasking and interprocess communication features.
• Speed up the system utilities development. It is 5-10 times faster to develop programs in REXX than in "C" programming language.
• Augment visual REXX libraries by providing the operating system interface. RexxBOS enables to use most of the OS/2 control program functionality.
• Provide an alternative character based user interface when the Presentation Manager graphic user interface is not available or is not desired. For example, the requirement to run an applications on a remote machine using TCP/IP telnet (terminal emulation software) session.
• Learn the OS/2 internals when using low level languages is not desired.
• Provide REXX with extremely fast disk I/O options.
• Enable REXX to control mouse, keyboard and full screen input/output.

RexxBOS is beneficial:

• When projects have limited development time.
• While there is a deficit in "C" programmers knowing OS/2 internals.
• When a fast OS/2 learning or investigation tool required.
• When REXX program speed should be optimized.
• While client/server applications should be developed in REXX.
• When remote access should be used.
• While heavy product maintenance is anticipated and new programmers' learning curve should be decreased.