UTILITY PROGRAMMING WITH REXX

Librarians and information specialists are commonly faced with problems related to the transfer and exchange of data. As intermediaries between information producers and end-users, we are often called on to collect and package data in a meaningful and presentable fashion. Common tasks involve filtering data to remove a carriage return or line feed character, or reformatting text to produce more readable end products. Tasks of this type often require short utility programs, most often written in Basic. This article presents an overview of the Rexx language and a sample utility program to illustrate the advantages of the Rexx language as an alternative to Basic.