REXX FOR UNICOS

[Andrew Hudson]

In article <14019 at lanl.gov> dph at lanl.gov (David Huelsbeck) writes:
<From article <1989Aug15.010010.16811 at agate.berkeley.edu<, by jerry at violet.berkeley.edu ( Jerry Berkman ):
< [...]
<< 
<< REXX may be better than COSMOS on CTSS, but that is irrelevant.
<< The question is is it better than the C shell and Bourne shell
<< which are distributed as part of UNICOS?
<
<COSMOS is mighty primative as CTSS command languages go.  At Los Alamos it
<was largely replaced (for new development anyway) by CCL which has subsequently
<been replaced by FCL.  FCL is the best command languages I've worked with yet.
<It makes the Unix shells look sort of pitiful; it makes COSMOS look pitiful 
<too.  Why don't you folks have more up to date CTSS command languages?
<
<I must admit that I'm not familiar with REXX.  However if it's anything
<like its predecessors EXEC and EXEC II all I can say is YUCK. 
<
<The standard Unix shells, UNICOS, COSMOS and CTSS are all things that I'm
<well versed in.  My guess is that the shells will provide some of the 
<functionality that CTSS command language users are used to and will demand
<under UNICOS.  I don't think they'll go far enough though.  The Unix shells
<have evolved to meet the demands of a particular type of user.  I don't think
<most people switching from CTSS to UNICOS are of that type.  (I can't speak
<for COS users)  Speaking as a person that has done quite a bit of work on
<CTSS, Unix and UNICOS I can tell you that the mind set of most Unix users is
<completely different than that of most CTSS users.  Both will find UNICOS
<inconvenient (I have) but the trauma will be less for Unix users.  The people
<used to working in a VMS environment and moving codes to either CTSS or COS
<may actually be the lucky ones in this respect.
<
<<And is it better than
<< other shells likely to become a part of UNICOS, and how many shells
<< do we really need?  I find C shell adequate for most uses, and
<< Bourne shell if I really need efficiency.
<< 
<
<To allow users to write the sorts of controllers they're used to writing on
<CTSS a new non-Unixish command language will *undoubtedly* be needed.  It's
<not just a matter of retraining the poor, dumb, CTSS users to see things the
<way all these enlightened Unix users have seen them for so long now.  
<-dph

I have used UNIX and VMS extensively and both UNICOS and CTSS to 
a small degree. Although I do not doubt that an expert CTSS user could
write and debug numerical application in the style typical of the 50's,
60's, and 70's, I find it hard to believe that a highly detailed,
batch oriented operating system, designed without the benefit of more
modern philosophies could lend itself to contemporary programming
practices. This is not a flame. It's just that I am dubious that
interactive scientific visualization would not benefit more from
a job running under a UNIX stream fed to a workstation, than say
creating a mondo batch-style data set and shipping that to a VMS
front end and plotting it. For instance. It's quite possible that I am naive
to the subtleties of advanced CTSS or COS practices. Maybe you could
cite a few examples of such.

- Andrew Hudson
GTE Laboratories