Perl...what environment(s) is it available in? My usual coding platforms are z/OS (specifically TSO) and Windows, mostly MS Office.
I don't actually know PowerShell; I've been exposed to it, see that it's very powerful for some purposes, and have modified PS scripts in minor ways. In other words my facility with PS is very much like younger mainframers' with JCL. But since I'm supposed to be a security jock, and sometimes have reason to extract data from AD to compare with RACF/TSS/ACF2, I see that really learning PS would be a good thing. As I've probably said here before, I lusted after ooRexx from the first day I heard about it, but at first couldn't see where I'd actually use it; I can't hand ooRexx code to clients, unless they already use it (and no one does). I finally broke down and got myself a copy for a small plain-text-to-formatted-PDF conversion I did for an error manual; I tried converting the plain text to formatted RTF using VBA, but gave it up as a bad job and did it in ooRexx, after taking a few days off to learn what I don't know. (There's a lot more to it than I expected.) Now I use it for automation on my own machine, but that’s all. Ruby -- no, never have. Again, what environment(s) is it available on? --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2024 15:14 CLIST will never go away, but I avoid it as much as possible. There is a very limited set of use cases for it, IMHO, and REXX has been my goto scripting language for decades, with a grudging nod to Perl when CPAN can make my life easier. PowerShell suggests that you're not limited to Z, inwhich case it's worth looking at ooRexx. Have you looked at Ruby? ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Bob Bridges <00000587168ababf-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> Sent: Friday, March 15, 2024 7:58 PM I can tell you how it happened to me, at any rate. I was a long-time CLISTer, and then one day, back in the mid '80s it might have been, I ran across a warning from IBM that someday soon CLIST might go away and REXX would be the only supported language for system automation (or something like that). I took them seriously - I didn't know at the time that they used to issue that warning periodically - and sat down with a manual to start learning REXX. I quickly realized that it's ~much~ superior to CLIST, and have been an enthusiast ever since. But that needn't stop me from tacking on other languages; I'm not tired of that yet, and I still have ambitions of adding more. Python is better, you say? But can I use it in the TSO environment? If it's only for Unix, I may pass for now. I still work for multiple clients and it seems to me I could usefully focus on languages that the clients are likely to use themselves. That means TSO REXX, VBA and VBS, SQL, assembler, probably PowerShell, maybe PL/1... What else? Seriously I'm open to the next one I should tackle. I keep hearing about Python, Lua, Ruby, C++ and others, but in what environment(s) would I use them? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
