Regina

Regina is a free rexx interpreter currently maintained by Mark Hessling. It is fairly easy to convert most rexx programs from standard OS/ 2 rexx (however see bugs/issues).

If you are using regina to run one of my programs its documentation is likely to be in an OS/2 INF, these can be viewed with the free DOS or 32 bit Windows based INF viewers.

To save you some trouble I have put some versions of regina here. If the operating system you have is not here you will need to visit Mark Hessling's Download Page. As I don't promise to always have the latest version here you might wish to check Mark's page anyway.

There is no complex setup, simply unzip and use. There may be more than one interpreter, simply preceed the command you wish to run with the name of the appropriate rexx interpreter. One thing to keep in mind is that you will get the same stupid message if the rexx interpreter can't find your rexx code OR it can't read the source (maybe corrupt?).

This section will document bugs, features and differences which it will help you to know about when converting an OS/2 program to use the free REGINA rexx interpreter. They are all ones that have bitten me and they are roughly in priority order (mine). The issues here are on top of those I can relatively easily take care of in my REXSYSTM.XH header file.

I am/will be chasing the up the issues and items will be removed as they become resolved.

Problem Type	Last Checked In	Details
Issue		'Sys' & some other calls The "Sys" calls such as "SysGetKey()" will not be available although my "REXSYSTM.XH" header files does provide some of the functionality of some of the calls. There are some other rexx functions under OS/2 which are OS/2 specific. Check the OS/2 rexx INF for each function, those that show an OS/2 icon are OS/2 specific. Again my header has at least one of these.
Issue		External Command You need to check all calls to the operating system. A simple "dir" command will probably work under DOS, OS/2 and Windows 95 & NT but probably won't on Unix.
Difference	0.08e	STREAM(SEEK) Regina has different and undocumented syntax from OS/2.
	0.08e DOS	'*' on Command Line Regina under DOS, unlike at least NT and OS/2 expands masks like "*.IT" and will not pass it to the program.
Difference	0.08e	CALL() WHITESPACE The following works under standard OS/2 rexx, not regina: call Fred'1234'
Difference	0.08h	EXIT() RETURN CODE The exit return code must be numeric unlike OS/2 where it can be anything.
Issue +	0.08e	Unknown() You will need to Add "OPTIONS NOEXT_COMMANDS_AS_FUNCS" so that it will not try to execute unknown functions as operating system commands. The bug is that if you don't set the above option there is no way of trapping the error. Does not appear to be well thought out.
Issue	Win 95 Win NT	ANSI ANSI strings don't seem to be available under NT.
Issue	0.08e	while lines() If you try commands such as "if lines(file)", this will fail under regina with a message telling you the logical value is not 0 or 1. This is not a bug. Rexx booleans must be 0 or 1. Recode the line to "if lines(file) <> 0".
Issue	0.08e	Maximum Line Length - Clause > x characters As far as I know OS/2 rexx does not have a line length. Regina does. In v0.08e it's 500 characters, apparently v0.08f has raised this to 1024. Normally you would not code a line this long, however a tools could easily do so (which is of course how I found it!). In long interpret statements break statements up with newlines so as to work around limit.
Issue	0.08e	Incorrect error messages Regina will in some cases tell you the wrong message or line number or both. Basically if you can't work the message out as is, start by assuming the wrong line number, if that doesn't help the message is probably wrong. There will be something wrong.
	0.08h	Hopeless Tracing in Interpret Don't even bother tracing interpreted code.
	0.08h	PARSE Bug A parse command such as the following will fail parse var from left(middle)right; You need to add spaces to seperate "(middle)".

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Unframe "regina.htm" Saturday May 28 2022 at 3:15pm