OS/2 Shareware BBS: 18 REXX/18-REXX.zip/rximc175.zip/rexx.ref

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The REXX/imc Interpreter

This is a reference for the various language features supported by the
REXX/imc interpreter.  An introduction, summary and technical reference
may be found in rexx.info, rexx.summary and rexx.tech, respectively.
_________________________________________________________________________

Invocation:   rexx [flags] filename args

where "filename" is the name of the REXX program you wish to execute,
and "flags" are some optional commandline parameters, described later.

Notes:

1. If the basename of "filename" does not contain a dot, then an
   interpreter-supplied extension (usually ".rexx") will be appended, and
   will become the "default extension".  If the file is not found with
   this extension then it will be searched without the extension.  If the
   basename of "filename" contains a dot and some following characters
   then these characters will become the default extension (the default
   extension is used when calling external functions).

   The interpreter-supplied extension may be changed at compile time
   (see the compilation instructions) or at run time by setting the
   environment variable REXXEXT.  For example: setenv REXXEXT ".exec".

2. The argument string may be any sequence of characters, including
   spaces, but not including NULs (\0). Bear in mind that quotes and/or
   escape characters may be necessary, because the shell interprets
   some characters as special and removes multiple spaces.

3. The REXX program is assumed to be a text file whose lines are
   separated by newline characters: thus newline characters may not
   appear in the middle of a line.  All other characters are allowed
   (but many characters are rejected unless they form part of a string
   constant or comment).

4. If the given filename does not include a path specification, then
   the interpreter will search through the directories listed in the
   REXXPATH environment variable - or, if that is not defined, the
   PATH environment variable - before looking in the current directory.
   The current directory (.) may be placed in REXXPATH to change this
   searching order.

Thus "rexx -ta test hello there" will call the program "test.rexx" with
argument "hello there" and flag "-ta".

The flags which are allowed all start with a "-" and are case-
insensitive.  They are:

  -option    where "option" is any option recognised by the OPTIONS
             instruction (see below), for example: -tracefile=test1
             (note that the file name in this option is case-sensitive
             as usual).

  -v         The interpreter will print out the version string (as used
             by "parse version").  The command "rexx -v" by itself will
             terminate after printing the version string, but all other
             forms will continue as if the -v option were not present
             after printing the version string.

  -s string  The interpreter will execute the contents of "string" as
  -c string  though it were a program.  The string may contain newline
             characters, which will be recognised as line terminators
             (in contrast to the string which appears in an INTERPRET
             instruction).  Note that if the string contains any shell
             metacharacters (including spaces) then it must be quoted to
             prevent the shell from interpreting it or splitting it up.
             The flags -s and -c are equivalent.  The latter is provided
             for consistency with shell parameters.

  -t setting The interpreter will execute "TRACE setting" before
             interpreting the program.  The space before the setting
             may be omitted, for example: -t?i.  Note that the setting
             may need to be quoted, because "?" is a shell metacharacter.

  -i         This equals "-t?a -s 'do forever;nop;end'".  The interpreter
             will enter interactive mode for you to type Rexx
             instructions.

  -x         This option is used for files with the execute bit set on:
             it prevents a ".rexx" from being appended to the filename,
             and it causes the first line of the file to be ignored
             (see below).  In REXX/imc >= 1.7 this option is no longer
             needed (since the interpreter will find the file without the
             extension) unless "filename.rexx" is also in the REXXPATH or
             the first line of the program is invalid in Rexx.

Except in the case that -i or -s is present, if a filename is omitted
or "-" is specified as the filename then REXX/imc reads a program from
the standard input.

The option "-x" and the filename "-" terminate the commandline flags.
The following parameter is assumed to be a filename (except when -i, -s
or - have been specified) followed by the Rexx program parameters.  To
execute a program called "-", say "rexx -x -".

REXX/imc allows you to write a program starting with the line:

#!/path/rexx [-x]

(where /path/rexx is the absolute path name of the interpreter) at the
top of the file so that the program can be made executable by the system.
REXX/imc will ignore the first line if it starts with "#!"  or if the
-x option is supplied.  The line will still be there, however, so line
numbers in error reports will be correct (the `sourceline' function will
also recognise the existence of this line).

Using the -x parameter to make REXX/imc ignore the first line allows
a further trick: in order to write a rexx program which is able to be
executed without knowing the exact path name to the interpreter, the
first line of the program should not be as above, but as follows:

exec rexx -x "$0" "$*"

as long as "rexx" can be found in a directory which is on the current
path.  Instead of that, however, it is now more desireable to use the
following line which is both a valid Rexx comment and a valid Unix
command to start the interpreter.

/*bin/true; exec rexx "$0" "$@" # REXX program */

The Rexx interpreter needs access to the program "rxque".  It will search
for this file in the following directories (in order):

 - that named by REXXIMC, if this environment variable is set.  If it
   is not set, then a default which was chosen at compile time is used
   instead.
 - the path name used when invoking Rexx, if any.  That is, if you type
   "/foo/rexx myexec", then /foo will be searched.  If you type
   "rexx myexec", then this step will be skipped.
 - the directories named in the environment variable PATH
 - the current directory.

It should not be necessary to set REXXIMC, but under certain
circumstances it may speed up the initialisation time to do so.

Environment Variables

As described above, REXXPATH is used to search for any program which is
called as a command, or PATH is used if that is not set.

REXXLIB is used to search for function libraries (see the technical
reference for details about function libraries).  If that variable
is not defined then REXX/imc looks in a path which was chosen at
compile time.

REXXFUNC is used to search for functions and subroutines which are not
found in any library (whether they are in Rexx or another language).  If
that variable is not defined, then REXX/imc looks in the same place as
for programs which are called as commands.

As described above, REXXIMC is used to search for the "rxque" program.

Each of REXXLIB, REXXFUNC, REXXPATH and PATH may be a colon-separated
list of directories, but REXXIMC must be a single directory name.
_________________________________________________________________________

The REXX Language, as interpreted by this implementation


NOTE:  There will occasionally be comments headed by `NOTE', `BUG' or
       `LOCAL'. The notes following these will usually be in the
       following categories:
    NOTE - (semi-)important information, pointing out traps or
           differences with other implementations.
    BUG  - a feature of the program (not always a particularly bad one,
           though never beneficial) which may not get fixed.
    LOCAL- a feature of the interpreter which I have deliberately (or
           accidentally) added and is not `real' REXX

NOTE:  Just because any particular description does not contain a note
       headed by `LOCAL', that does not necessarily mean that the
       relevant function behaves exactly according to the REXX
       specification. It does mean, however, that I would like to know
       of such instances where there is a difference, so that I can
       either change the program or add a note to describe the
       behaviour.

The use of non-implemented REXX constructs will produce either error 82
(Syntax error) or error 81 (Un-implemented function).  I hope that there
is none of these, except that error 81 may occur when a .rxfn function
file is found on a system which does not support dynamic libraries.
_________________________________________________________________________

Summary:

Expressions
Function or subroutine invocation
Built-in functions
Instructions:
   NOP
   SAY, SAYN (local)
   Assignment
   DROP
   NUMERIC
   EXIT
   DO
   LEAVE
   ITERATE
   IF
   SELECT
   PARSE
   QUEUE, PUSH
   CALL (and function calls)
   RETURN
   PROCEDURE
   INTERPRET
   SIGNAL
   SIGNAL ON
   TRACE
   OPTIONS
   ADDRESS
Commands to the environment
The REXX I/O model
The stack
Error messages
_________________________________________________________________________

Expressions

Every expression evaluates to a string. There are no numeric expressions,
but arithmetic may be performed on those strings which happen to
represent numbers in decimal. From here on, references to "numbers" or
"numeric" values will mean strings of the following format:
   [+|-] [nnnnn][.][nnnn] [E [+|-] nnn]
That is, an optional sign followed by a string of digits, possibly
including a decimal point, followed by an optional exponent. The exponent
consists of a letter `E' (or `e'), an optional sign, and a sequence of
digits. No spaces are allowed within a number, but trailing or leading
spaces are allowed, and spaces may occur between the leading sign and the
first digit. There is no number which contains no digits before the
exponent (if any), and "." is not a number.

Whenever REXX constructs a number (such as the result of an arithmetic
operation), it is formatted according to the following rules:

   - a zero result is always expressed as the single digit "0".
   - it is rounded up or down if necessary, so that the specified number
     of significant figures is not exceeded. The number of significant
     figures is usually 9, but can be changed with the NUMERIC DIGITS
     instruction.
   - If the number is negative, it is preceded by a minus sign, otherwise
     there is no sign. A number never contains spaces.
   - If the magnitude of the number is less than 1 (and if exponential
     notation is not used) then a single zero digit precedes the
     decimal point.
   - An exponential form of the number - e.g. 1.234E+65 - will be used
     if the number of digits otherwise required before or after the
     decimal point exceeds NUMERIC DIGITS or twice that value,
     respectively.
   - If NUMERIC FORM SCIENTIFIC is in effect (the default) and the
     number is expressed in exponential form, then the mantissa has
     precisely one digit before the decimal point (if any), which is
     non-zero. The exponent consists of the letter E followed by a plus
     or minus sign, and then the exponent (with no spaces or leading
     zeros).
   - If NUMERIC FORM ENGINEERING is in effect and the number is
     expressed in exponential form then the exponent is a multiple of
     three. Up to three digits appear before the decimal point in the
     mantissa, but otherwise the form is similar to the `scientific'
     form described above.

See the NUMERIC command for some more information.

An expression consists of one or more constants or variables which
may be combined with the use of operators and functions, as described
below. Spaces are allowed within expressions, as long as they do not
split up variable names or other integral items.

String Constants: These are enclosed in quotes. Either single or double
             quotes may be used, but the terminating quote must be the
             same as the initial quote. A string may contain any
             characters, but to enclose a quote of the same
             kind as the delimeters, the quote is typed twice.
             A string containing no characters is a null string.
             Example:
                 "that's right"          has value   that's right
                 '"I''m here," I said.'  has value   "I'm here," I said.
                 ""                      is the null string.

Hex Constants:    A hex constant contains a sequence of hex digits
             grouped in pairs. The first group may have just one digit,
             in which case a `0' is added to the left. The groups are
             optionally separated by spaces. Each group (pair) of hex
             digits is translated into the character it represents in
             ASCII. The list is enclosed in quotes and immediately
             after the terminating quote is an `X' (or `x'). The `X'
             must not form part of a longer word.
             Example:
                 "41 4243   44 "x        has value   ABCD

Binary Constants: A binary constant is like a hex constant, but has `B'
             instead of `X' and contains binary digits ("0" or "1").
             The digits are arranged in nybbles - that is, groups of 4,
             which may optionally be separated by spaces.  The first
             nybble may have less than 4 digits, in which case it is
             extended on the left with zeros.  If an odd number of
             nybbles is present, a zero nybble is added on the left.
             Each pair of nybbles is then translated into an ASCII
             character.  Example:
                 '10 0011 00100001'b     has value   CA

             NOTE: the sequence of binary or hex digits must not contain
                   leading or trailing blanks.

Symbols:          A symbol contains any number of letters, numbers,
             dots and the characters @#$!?_ and is always translated
             to upper case before use.  A constant symbol is one which
             starts with a number or a dot, and when it is found in an
             expression, the characters of the symbol itself are used.
             In addition, a single plus or minus sign is allowed in a
             constant symbol if it is part of (the exponent of) a number
             as defined above.
                  Any non-constant symbol may be assigned a value by the
             statement
                       symbol = expression
                  A simple symbol is one which does not contain any dots
             and does not start with a digit. When it is used in an
             expression it names a variable, and if it has been assigned
             a value then that value is used, otherwise the symbol itself
             is used (after translating to upper case).
                  A stem is a symbol which ends with a dot, but does not
             contain any other dots and does not start with a digit or
             dot.  It can be used in an expression or assigned to (see
             below).
                  A compound symbol is a symbol which consists of a stem
             followed by a tail. The tail consists of a non-empty
             sequence of `qualifiers' separated by dots. Each qualifier
             is ordinarily a simple symbol, a constant symbol, or null
             (that is, it contains no characters), but as a LOCAL
             extension, some additional qualifiers are allowed.  The
             following can be used as qualifiers:
              1. a simple symbol, which is substituted by its value
                 before being used in the compound variable name
              2. a constant symbol, which is uppercased before being used
                 in the compound symbol
              3. a null qualifier (as in `a..b')
              4. a string constant
              5. a parenthesised expression.
             The stem and all qualifiers (1) and (2) above are uppercased
             before use, but the value of a symbol in (1) or of a string
             constant or expression in (4) or (5) is not uppercased.
                  After the name of a compound symbol has been found, if
             it has a value then that value is used, otherwise the name
             of the symbol is used (with no uppercasing).
                  If a stem is assigned a value (as in `foo.=7'), then
             every possible compound symbol is given that value (so, for
             example, foo.bar now has value 7).  If a stem is used in an
             expression, its value will be the last value assigned to the
             stem, if any (and otherwise its value will be the stem's
             name in uppercase).  So, for example, foo. now has value 7.

             Examples:
             If foo has been assigned the value 5 but no other names have
             been assigned values, then:
                foo is a simple symbol with a value
                foobar is a simple symbol without a value
             and
                foo.5
                foo.Foo
                FOO.'5'
                foo.(foo*3-10)
             all represent the same compound symbol (which has no value,
             so the string "FOO.5" will be used).
             However,
                foo.'bar'
                foo.'BAR'
             represent different compound symbols, each of which has no
             value (so the strings "FOO.bar" and "FOO.BAR" will be used
             respectively).
LOCAL:       Note that qualifiers (4) and (5) above are local extensions.

Literals:         A literal is another name for a constant symbol, or a
             non-constant symbol without a value.

BUG:  There is an upper limit on the length of variable names. If at any
      time during the interpretation of a variable name the interpreter's
      copy of the name is likely to exceed about 250 characters, there
      will be an error.

Operators:

Each operator described below will be given a priority. Operators are
applied, from left to right, in order of their priority, 1 being
carried out last. Thus, in "3+4*5/2" the operations carried out are, in
order:
   4*5=20  (priority 8)
   20/2=10 (priority 8)
   3+10=13 (priority 7)

Unary operators:  + 11  (+a is similar to 0+a)
                  - 11  (arithmetical negation)
                  ^
              or  \ 11  (boolean negation)
Binary operators: **10  (exponentiation)
                  *  8  (multiplication)
                  /  8  (division)
                  %  8  (integer division)
                  // 8  (remainder from integer division)
                  +  7  (addition)
                  -  7  (subtraction)
                  || 6  (concatenation)
                  =  5  (equality)
                  == 5  (strong equality)
                  <>
              or  ><
              or  ^=
              or  \= 5  (not equality)
                 ^==
                 \== 5  (strong nequality)
                  <  5
                  <=
              or  ^>
              or  \> 5  (the usual relations)
                  >  5
                  >=
              or  ^<
              or  \< 5
                  >> 5  (strong greater-than)
                  << 5  (strong less-than)
                 >>=
              or ^<<
              or \<< 5  (strong greater-or-equal)
                 <<=
              or ^>>
              or \>> 5  (strong less-or-equal)
                  &  3  (boolean and)
                  |  2  (boolean or)
                  && 2  (boolean xor)

NOTE: The character `\' and the character `^' both mean `not' and
      are interchangeable.  The preferred `not' character is `\'.

In addition to these binary operations, there are two concatenation
operators. Firstly, if two values are placed next to each other with
no space in between (clearly they must be differentiable for this to
make sense), they are concatenated, with priority 6. Secondly, if two
values are placed next to each other with at least one space between,
they are concatenated with a space between, with priority 6.

For example, 1"+"1"="1+1             has value   1+1=2
             1    "+" 1   "="1+1     has value   1 + 1 =2

NOTE: There are a small number of cases where the space operator does
     not give the intended result. Example:
         1  -2   4   -7       does not equal 1 -2 4 -7
                              but it equals  -1 -3
     because spaces are allowed within expressions, and so this
     expression is interpreted as meaning
         1-2  4-7

Parentheses are used in order to circumvent the usual priorities of
operators, so that, for example, (1+2)*3 is 9, whereas 1+2*3 is 7.

A function call consists of a function name (which is a symbol) followed
immediately by a left parenthesis, a list of expressions separated by
commas, and a right parenthesis.  Arguments may be omitted simply by
putting no expression between one comma (or parenthesis) and the next.
As with simple symbols, the function name is translated to upper case
unless it is a string constant.  Note that a function name must not
end with a dot unless it is quoted, because in that case it would be
interpreted as a compound symbol containing a parenthesised expression.
Also note that there must be no space between the function name and the
opening parenthesis, because otherwise the space will be treated as a
concatenation operator (see above).  When a function is called, it must
return a result, otherwise an error will be raised.

Examples: time('c')       uname('-a')        format(x,,,,4)

See the section on function or subroutine invocation for more details.

Arithmetic Operators:

  The operand(s) must be numeric values. If they are not, then an error
results.
  The usual arithmetic rules apply. See the "NUMERIC" command.
  The y operand the exponentiation operator in "x ** y" must be an
integer, otherwise an error results. The exponentiation operator works
effectively by multiplying x by itself y times, and taking the
reciprocal if y<0. (It uses an O(log y) method).
  The integer division operator % is defined so that x%y is the integer
part of x/y (obtained by rounding towards zero), and x = y*(x%y) + (x//y)
For example, 10 % 0.3 = 33  and  10 // 0.3 = 0.1
  An integer is a whole number which lies within the range of the machine
(-2**31 to 2**31-1).  A whole number is any number with no non-zero
fractional part which would not be written in exponential notation when
formatted.
  The maximum exponent is about 999999999. An overflow or underflow
will occur if the limit is exceeded.

BUG:  You might find that the maximum number boundary is a little `fuzzy'
      but if you keep below 1E999999990 you should be alright!
BUG:  Whole numbers must be less than 1999999999.

Boolean logic:

Several of the above operators operate on boolean values or create
boolean values. The following rules apply:

1. The result of a binary relation or of the \ (or ^) operator is always
   1 for true, 0 or false.
2. A boolean value is represented by any number (attempts to use other
   strings will result in an error). False is represented by zero, and
   any other number represents true.

LOCAL: In `real' REXX a boolean value may only be represented by 0 or 1.

3. \x has the obvious meaning consistent with the above (i.e. 1 if x=0,
   and 0 otherwise).
4. x & y   is 0 if y is false but has the same value as x when y is true.
5. x | y   is 1 if y is true but has the same value as x when y is false.
6. x && y  has value x if y is false, and \x otherwise.

Binary relations:

(note that the symbol '\' means `not' and may be placed before any of the
relations to negate its value, e.g. \=, \>> etc. Thus, for instance,
\> and <= have the same meaning, as do \>> and <<=, etc.  The character
`^` is a synonym for '\' - so ^== is the same as \==).

The operators ==, \==, <<, >>, <<=, >>= compare their two operands
character by character and thus have the normal meaning of string
equality, greater, less, etc.

All other operators depend on whether or not both operands are numeric.
If they are, then they are subtracted and the result compared with zero.
Otherwise, leading and trailing spaces are stripped and the operations
are compared as strings usually are, with the shorter string being
padded on the right with spaces before the comparison.

Hence:  "0.10"    \== "1e-1"        (strict string comparison)
        "0.10"     =  "1e-1"        (numeric comparison)
        "  hello" \== "hello  "     (strict comparison respects spaces)
        "  hello"  =  "hello  "     (weak comparison strips spaces)
        "abc "     >> "abc"         (strict comparison respects spaces)
        "61626300"x < "616263"x     (the latter is padded with a space)
        "61626364"x > "616263"x     (ordinary string comparison)
        "2.5"       > "10abc"       (string comparison)
        "2.5"       < "10"          (numeric comparison)
        "2.5"      >> "10           (strict string comparison)

In this implementation, character comparisons are unsigned, that is to
say "ff"x is greater than "00"x, etc.
_________________________________________________________________________

Function or Subroutine Invocation

A function is a routine which is called using the syntax:

   symbolorstring(arguments)

whereas a subroutine is a routine which is called using the syntax:

   CALL symbolorstring arguments

In each case the method of searching for and executing the routine is
that detailed below.  What happens when the routine returns depends upon
whether the routine was called as a function or a subroutine: a function
is required to return a result, whereas a subroutine need not.  Also, the
result from a subroutine, if any, is assigned to the special variable
RESULT after the subroutine finishes.  The remainder of this section
describes the features which are common to subroutines and functions.

There are three types of routine, which are searched in the following
order:
  1. Internal routines.  These are not searched if the routine name is a
     string constant.
  2. Built-in routines (a list of which is given in the next section).
     Note that if the routine name is a string constant, it must be in
     upper case for the search to succeed.
  3. External routines.

An internal routine is one which is stored in the currently executing
program.  It is introduced by a label, which takes the form
  name:
and may be placed anywhere at the start of an instruction (or on its
own on a line).  When an internal function is called, all labels are
checked.  When a match is found, interpretation jumps to the instruction
immediately following the label, and continues until the next RETURN
statement (or EXIT, or the end of the program).  When RETURN is reached
execution continues from the point of the call (but since reaching an
EXIT or the end of the program causes the program to terminate, execution
cannot continue in these cases).

The arguments to an internal routine may be found using the "PARSE ARG"
instruction.  A result may be returned to the caller by writing it as a
parameter to the RETURN instruction.

The name of a label or of an internal routine may contain letters,
numbers, dots and characters which are valid in symbols, but must not
end with a dot.  The name is translated to uppercase (except in the
case of string constants) but no variable substitution occurs, even
after a dot.

On entry to an internal function, the special variable SIGL will be
set to the line number of the instruction which caused the transfer of
control.  This applies equally to function calls, subroutine calls with
the CALL instruction, and instructions which cause a condition handler
to be called (see "CALL ON").

An internal routine may or may not hide (some or all of) its variables
using the PROCEDURE instruction, described below.  By default, all
variables remain visible during an internal routine.

An external routine is any routine which is stored in a separate file
on the system.  It may be in Rexx or in any other language, and it may
be stored singly or in a library.  Libraries are searched first, in the
directories named by environment variable REXXLIB, or, if that is not
set, in the path chosen at compile time (see the technical reference for
details on how to write a function library).  If a routine is not found
in a library, it is searched for in the directories named by environment
variable REXXFUNC or (if that is not set) REXXPATH or (if neither of
those is set) PATH.  The name of the routine as given by the calling
program will be translated to lower case, even if it is a string constant
(though this may change in a future release).  The full path name of
the routine, excluding its file extension, may be given by the calling
program, but in this case the name will need to be enclosed in quotes
because otherwise the slash (/) would be interpreted as a division
operator.

An external routine or library may be written in one of four ways,
which are searched for in order:
   - A function registered by RXFUNCADD or by using the API;
   - A dynamically loaded object file whose name ends with ".rxfn";
   - A Rexx program whose name ends with either
      * the default extension, or
      * the interpreter-supplied extension (usually ".rexx"), or
   - Any Unix program whose name matches that given by the caller
     without a file extension.

The technical reference gives details on how to write external functions
which can be registered or dynamically loaded, or which are Unix
programs.  Note, however, that certain Unix system programs may be
also called using this interface, for example: uname('-s')='SunOS'
(perhaps).

An external routine which is a Rexx program will be executed as if it
were a completely separate process.  All parameters such as NUMERIC
DIGITS and ADDRESS will be set to default values, all condition traps
(see "CALL ON" and "SIGNAL ON") will be reset, and none of the variables
of the caller will be accessible (but see OPTIONS 'EXPOSE' below).  All
these things will be preserved during the external routine and restored
when the routine finishes.  However, OPTIONS settings may or may not be
reset to their defaults and preserved.  There is thus no way for one REXX
program to affect the variables of another, except via parameters and
results.  (Note that data can be passed back and forth via the stack,
however).

An external routine which is a Rexx program may use the "PARSE ARG"
instruction to examine its arguments, and may return a result to
the caller by specifying it as a parameter to the RETURN or EXIT
instructions.  When the program terminates using RETURN or EXIT or
when the interpreter reaches the end of the program, the caller will
resume execution as normal.

NOTE: Once a ".rxfn" routine or library has been found, all the routines
      defined within it become in effect built-in functions.  When the
      interpreter is searching for such a routine, the name is not
      translated to lower case, and any leading path name is ignored.
      However, the name of the routine (i.e. that part which comes after
      the last slash) will usually be required to be in upper case - so
      "/my/directory/ROUTINE" is the preferred way to name a routine in
      /my/directory.
NOTE: The above notes about case translation will change in the future.

NOTE: When a single routine other than a ".rxfn" file is found, its
      file name is stored by the interpreter.  This result will be
      used for any future references to routines with the same spelling
      (including case).  This makes the call faster, but it means that
      files used as routines should not be renamed while the interpreter
      is active.  A similar note applies to libraries: the interpreter
      reads all library definitions at the first external routine call,
      and therefore libraries should not be changed or renamed while the
      interpreter is active.

Examples (assuming that the default extension is ".rexx"):
  foo(3,,6)          calls an internal or built-in function named FOO,
                     or an external function named foo.rxfn, foo.rexx
                     or just foo, with arguments "3", nothing, "6".
  'DATE'()           always calls the built-in function DATE with no
                     arguments.
  call "/bin/ABC" 6  calls an external subroutine named /bin/abc.rxfn,
                     /bin/abc.rexx or /bin/abc with argument "6".

This program uses an internal function to calculate a factorial.

        parse arg x         /* this is an example factorial program. */
        say x"!="fact(x)
        exit
 fact:  parse arg p         /* the argument to fact is assigned to p */
        if p<3 then return p
        return p*fact(p-1)
_________________________________________________________________________

Built-In Functions

In this section, several of the function arguments are named with the
following conventions:

 "number"   must be numeric.
 "length"   must be a non-negative whole number.
 "count"    must be a non-negative whole number.
 "position" must be a positive whole number.
 "pad"      must be a string of length 1.
 "option"   must be a nonempty string.  Only the first character of the
            option is significant, and it is translated to uppercase
            before use.
 "file"     must be the name of a stream.  This can be any nonempty
            string which does not contain NUL characters ('0'x).


ABBREV(information,info[,length])

This returns 1 if info is a valid abbreviation of information - that is,
info is a prefix of information and its length is at least that specified
by the optional third argument (whose default is the length of info). If
the length given is zero, then a null string is a valid abbreviation of
anything.

ABS(number)

The magnitude of the given number is returned.

ADDRESS()

The current environment string is returned (see ADDRESS instruction).

ARG([position][,option])

This function deals with the argument(s) passed into a REXX program,
function or subroutine. With no parameters, the result is the number of
arguments given; that is, the position of the last explicitly specified
argument. If the parameter "position" is given, then the result is the
"position"th argument string, or an empty string if the argument was
not supplied. If the option is supplied, its first character must be
"E" or "O", standing for "Exists" or "Omitted" respectively. The result
of the function is then 0 or 1, depending on whether the "position"th
argument string exists or was omitted, with 1 meaning that "option" is
true.

  Example: if a rexx function was called by:
         foo(5,,7)
  then   arg()      = 3
         arg(1)     = 5
         arg(2,'e') = 0

BITAND(string1[,[string2][,pad]])

This function performs a bitwise-AND on its two string arguments.  If
the string2 argument is omitted, an empty string is used for string2
instead.  Before the operation, the shorter of the two string arguments
is padded with the pad character.  If no pad character is given, then
'FF'x is used, so that excess characters in the longer string remain
unchanged after the operation.  The result of the operation is the
string of characters such that the nth character in the string is the
bitwise-AND of the nth character of string1 and the nth character of
string2.

BITOR(string1[,[string2][,pad]])

This function performs a bitwise-OR on its two string arguments.  If
the string2 argument is omitted, an empty string is used for string2
instead.  Before the operation, the shorter of the two string arguments
is padded with the pad character.  If no pad character is given, then
'00'x is used, so that excess characters in the longer string remain
unchanged after the operation.  The result of the operation is the string
of characters such that the nth character in the string is the bitwise-OR
of the nth character of string1 and the nth character of string2.

BITXOR(string1[,[string2][,pad]])

This function performs a bitwise-XOR on its two string arguments.  If
the string2 argument is omitted, an empty string is used for string2
instead.  Before the operation, the shorter of the two string arguments
is padded with the pad character.  If no pad character is given, then
'00'x is used, so that excess characters in the longer string remain
unchanged after the operation.  The result of the operation is the
string of characters such that the nth character in the string is the
bitwise-XOR of the nth character of string1 and the nth character of
string2.

C2X, C2D, B2X, B2D, D2C, D2B, D2X, X2B, X2C, X2D

Each of these is a function taking an argument and possibly a count and
returning a conversion of that argument. Each function converts an
argument of a type indicated by the first character of the function name
(Character, heX, Binary or Decimal) into the type indicated by the last
character of the name.

 Examples: c2x("abc") = "616263"   d2x(286)="11E"
           d2c(65)="A"             d2b(65)="01000001"

BUG: Each of the conversion functions which deal with decimal numbers is
     restricted to inputs which have a value of less than 2**31 when
     converted to an unsigned integer.
LOCAL: B2D and D2B are not defined in standard REXX.

Details of these functions are below:
.........................................................................

B2D(binary)

The binary input is converted into a non-negative decimal number.  Spaces
are allowed in the binary string between four-digit sequences, and the
first "four-digit" sequence may contain fewer than four digits, in which
case up to three leading '0' digits will be assumed.

B2X(binary)

Each set of four binary digits in the input is converted to a hex digit
and these are concatenated together to form the result.  Spaces are
allowed in the binary string between four-digit sequences, and the
first "four-digit" sequence may contain fewer than four digits, in
which case up to three leading '0' digits will be assumed.

D2B(decimal)

The decimal input is converted into binary. The length of the result is
the smallest possible multiple of 8.

C2X(string)

The n-character string is converted into 2n hex digits.

C2D(string[,length])

The string is converted into a decimal number, interpreting the leftmost
character as the most significant byte.  If length is omitted, then the
whole string is converted and the result is positive. If the length is
given, then the string is truncated or padded with zero bytes on the
left to give a string of this length, and is then taken to be a twos
complement number. In this case the result may therefore be negative.

D2C(decimal[,length])

The decimal number is converted into a string of characters (with the
leftmost character being the most significant). If the length is given,
then the result is truncated or sign-extended on the left to be of this
length.  Otherwise the length of the result is such that the leftmost
character is not '00'x (for positive numbers) or 'FF'x (for negative
numbers) except in the case of zero, which is converted to '00'x.

D2X(decimal[,length])

The decimal number is converted into a hex number.  If the length is
given, then the result is truncated or sign-extended on the left to be
of this length.  Otherwise the length of the result is such that for
positive numbers there is no leading zero, and for negative numbers
there is no leading 'F' except in the case when the next hex digit is
less than 8. D2X(0) returns a single zero digit.

X2B(hex)

Each digit in the given hex string is converted to four binary digits and
these are concatenated together.  Spaces are optional between pairs of
hex digits, and the first "pair" of digits may contain only one digit.

X2C(hex)

The hex string is converted to characters, just as when 'hex'x is typed.
Spaces are optional between pairs of hex digits, and the first byte of
the string may optionally contain only one digit, in which case a
leading '0' is assumed.

X2D(hex[,length])

The hex string, which should contain only hex digits (and no spaces) is
first truncated or extended with zeros on the left to be of the given
length if necessary, and then converted into a decimal number.  If the
length is given, then the hex is assumed to be in twos complement
notation.  Otherwise the result will always be nonnegative.
.........................................................................

CENTER(s,length[,pad])  or  CENTRE(s,length[,pad])

This function returns a string of the given length containing s. If s
contains fewer than the required number of characters, then pad
characters (pad, or by default, blanks) are added on each side to
centre s in the result, otherwise characters are taken away from each
side of s leaving the middle block of characters. If an odd number of
characters needs to be added or taken away, then the right-hand side
loses or gains one more than the left.

CHARIN([file] [,[position] [,count]])

Reads characters from a file. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

CHAROUT([file] [,[string] [,position]])

Writes characters to a file. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

CHARS([file])

Finds the number of characters available for reading. See the section on
the REXX I/O model.

CLOSE(file)

Closes a file. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

COMPARE(s1,s2[,pad])

The strings s1 and s2 are compared, after first making them of equal
length by adding pad characters (or spaces) to the right of the shorter.
The result is 0 if the strings are identical, otherwise the position of
the first character at which the strings disagree.

CONDITION([option])

This function returns information about the current trapped condition
(see "SIGNAL ON" and "CALL ON" for more information).  If there is no
such condition, then an empty string is returned.  If the option is
present, it must be one of the following:

   'C': Returns the condition which was trapped (one of "SYNTAX",
        "ERROR", "HALT", "NOVALUE", "FAILURE" or "NOTREADY").
   'D': Returns a description of the event which caused the condition.
        For "ERROR" and "FAILURE", this is the command string which
        resulted in error or failure.  For "NOTREADY" it is the name of
        the stream which was not ready.  For "NOVALUE" it is the
        derived name of the variable which has no value.  For "HALT" it
        is the Unix name of the signal which caused the interruption.
        For "SYNTAX" it is the error message which would have been
        displayed on the terminal if the error had not been trapped.
   'I': Returns the instruction name "CALL" or "SIGNAL" as appropriate
        to describe how the condition was trapped.
   'S': Returns the current status of the condition as "ON", "OFF" or
        "DELAY".

If the option is omitted then 'I' is assumed.

COPIES(s,count)

This function returns a string consisting of "count" copies of the
string s concatenated together.

DATATYPE(string[,option])

This function tests the datatype of the string. If the function is called
with just one argument, then the function returns "NUM" if the argument
is a valid number, and "CHAR" otherwise.

If both arguments are supplied, then the answer is a logical value
(0 or 1) indicating whether or not string is of the type given by the
option.  Is s is an empty string then the answer is always 0 unless
testing for a hex constant (the null string is a valid hex constant).
The option must be one of the following:

   'A': s is alphanumeric (containing characters only from the ranges
        "a-z", "A-Z" and "0-9")
   'B': s contains bits (all characters 0 or 1)
   'L': s is lower case (containing only "a-z")
   'M': s is mixed case (containing only "a-z" and "A-Z")
   'N': s is a valid number
   'S': s is a valid REXX symbol (variable or constant)
   'U': s is upper case (containing only "A-Z")
   'W': s is a whole number
   'X': s satisfies the rules for a hex constant (i.e. contains only
        "0-9", "a-f", "A-F" and blanks in appropriate places).

DATE([option][,date[,option]])

When used with zero or one arguments, the DATE function returns the
current date in a user-defined format.  When used with two or three
arguments, it converts the date given in the second parameter from
one format to another.

The format in which the date will be output is given by the first
parameter, whose first letter must match that of one of the options
listed below.  If the parameter is omitted then 'N' is assumed.

Base    - the theoretical number of days in the common era (i.e. since
          1/1/1 AD).  On 1/1/1900 the result would be 693595.
Century - the number of days so far since the zero year of the most
          recent century (so on 1/1/1900 or 1/1/2000 the result would be
          1).  This option is deprecated and was not adopted by ANSI; use
          the Base option instead.
Days    - the number of days so far in this year (so on 12 Jan 1986 the
          result would be 12).
European- the date in the format dd/mm/yy.
Julian  - the date in the format yyddd (where ddd is as in "Days" above).
          This option is deprecated and was not adopted by ANSI.
Month   - the full name of the current month, e.g. August.
Normal  - the date in the format dd Mmm yyyy, e.g. 27 Aug 1982 (with no
          leading zero).
Ordered - the date in the format yy/mm/dd.
Standard- the date in the format yyyymmdd.
USA     - the date in the format mm/dd/yy.
Weekday - the full name of the current day, e.g. Tuesday.

If a date is given in the second parameter, the third parameter must
state what format it is in (if the third parameter is omitted then 'N'
is assumed).  The possible values for the third parameter are the same
as listed above, with the exception that options 'W' and 'M' are not
allowed.  If the input date has a two-digit year then the century is
chosen so as to make the year no more than 49 years before or 50 years
after the current year.

On the first call to DATE or TIME in an expression, a time stamp is
made which is then used for all calls to these functions within that
expression.  Hence if multiple calls to these functions are made within
a single expression, they are guaranteed to be consistent with each
other.

BUG: The DATE function only works within the limits defined for Unix
     dates (usually approximately 1902-2037), and in any case the
     DATE('C') function only works between 1900 and 2099.  Using 'C' for
     the input format may occasionally result in the wrong century being
     chosen if the given date is very close to 50 years from this
     year.
BUG: The DATE function is slightly lenient in what it accepts as a valid
     date from the second parameter.  For instance, "30 Feb 1997" would
     be accepted as if it said "2 Mar 1997".

DELSTR(string,position[,length])

A substring of string is deleted and the result returned. The substring
to be deleted starts at the given position and has length length. If
the length is not specified, then the rest of the string is deleted.
If the given position is greater than the length of the string, or if
length is zero, then the string is returned unchanged.

DELWORD(string,position[,count])

This function is a word-oriented version of DELSTR. It deletes the
substring of string which starts at the "position"th blank-delimited
word and is of "count" blank-delimited words. If there are not
"position" words in the string, or if count is 0, the string is
returned unchanged. The string deleted includes any blanks following
the final word deleted, but does not remove any blanks preceding the
first word deleted.

DIGITS()

The result is the current setting of NUMERIC DIGITS.

ERRORTEXT(i)

i must be a whole number. The result is the message that would be
displayed if error i were to occur, except that it does not include
information such as the name of an undefined label, etc.. If error i is
not defined, then an empty string is returned.

Standard Unix I/O errors may be retrieved with this function also.
Just add 100 to the error number.

See the section on error messages.

BUG: REXX/imc defines messages for the values 199-203.  Some systems have
more than 98 Unix I/O errors and on these systems messages 99-103 cannot
be returned by the ERRORTEXT function.

FDOPEN(fd [,[mode] [,file]])

Open a file descriptor for reading or writing. See the section on the
REXX I/O model.

FILENO(file)

Gives the fd number associated with a file. See the section on the REXX
I/O model.

FORM()

The result is either "SCIENTIFIC" or "ENGINEERING", according to the
current setting of NUMERIC FORM.

FORMAT(number [,[before] [,[after] [,[expp] [,expt]]]] )

The given number is rounded and formatted according to the information
given, as described below (note that the number is always rounded
according to NUMERIC DIGITS, if necessary, before being processed by
this function):

If just `number' is specified, then it is formatted according to the
usual rules for REXX numerics.

The number is formatted, possibly in exponential form, with `before'
digits before the decimal point and `after' digits after. `before' must
be strictly positive and includes any leading minus sign. `after' must
be non-negative. If `after' is zero, then there will be no decimal
point in the output. If either `before' or `after' is omitted, then
as many places as required are used. If `before' is too small then an
error results. If it is too large, then leading spaces are used to fill
the extra places. The number is rounded or extended with zeros as
necessary in order to have `after' digits after the decimal point
(note that this is not the same as TRUNC, which truncates the number
rather than rounding it). The rounding rules are as usual - the first
digit which is not required is checked and if it is 5 or more, the last
required digit is incremented.

`expt' specifies the trigger for exponential form. Exponential form is
used whenever the number would otherwise require more than `expt'
digits before or more than twice `expt' digits after the decimal point.
If `expt' is zero, exponential form is always used. The number will be
formatted according to NUMERIC FORM, and may need up to three places
before the decimal point if ENGINEERING form is in effect. The default
value for `expt' is the current setting of NUMERIC DIGITS.

`expp' specifies the number of digits (excluding the letter E and the
sign) used for the exponent. If it is zero, exponential form is never
used (this overrides the setting of `expt' if necessary). Otherwise, if
exponential form needs to be used, the exponent must fit in the specified
width, or an error results. Leading zeros are added as necessary to make
the exponent the correct width. A zero exponent, however, always causes
`expp+2' spaces to be added instead of the exponent (but no spaces if
expp is omitted, or is zero). If `expp' is omitted, then as many places
as required are used for the exponent.

Examples: (with NUMERIC FORM SCIENTIFIC and NUMERIC DIGITS 9)

format('3',4)             == '   3'
format('1.73',4,0)        == '   2'
format('1.73',4,3)        == '   1.730'
format('-.76',4,1)        == '  -0.8'
format('0.000')           == '0'
format('12345.73',,,2,2)  == '1.234573E+04'
format('12345.73',,3,,0)  == '1.235E+4'
format('1.2345',,3,2,0)   == '1.235    '
format('1234567e5',,3,0)  == '123456700000.000'

FTELL(file)

Gives the current pointer position of a file. See the section on the
REXX I/O model.

FUZZ()

The result is the current setting of NUMERIC FUZZ.

INSERT(new,target[,[n][,[length][,pad]]])

The new string is inserted into the target string after the nth character
or if n is omitted or is zero, the new string is inserted before the
beginning of the target string. If length is specified, then the new
string is padded or truncated to that length before inserting. The
default pad character is a blank.

JUSTIFY(s,length[,pad])

This function first removes all surplus space from s (as per SPACE(s) ),
then attempts to right-justify s in a string of "length" characters by
adding spaces between the words of s. If s does not fit in a field of
"length" characters, the first "length" characters of s are returned.
If the optional pad character is supplied, then the words in the output
string are separated by instances of that character rather than by
spaces.

LASTPOS(needle,haystack[,position])

This function finds the last occurrence, if any, of the needle within
haystack. The answer is the position of the last occurrence if there is
one (numbering from 1 to the length of haystack), or zero if needle does
not occur in haystack. If the optional position is supplied, the search
starts from this position instead of the end of haystack.  If the
needle is the empty string, zero is returned.

LEFT(string,length[,pad])

The first two mandatory parameters are a string and a length. The result
of this function is the leftmost "length" characters of string. If
string has fewer than this many characters, then it is padded up to the
required length with spaces on the right, or, if the pad character is
given, with this character.

Examples: left("12345",2) = "12"   left("123",5,"0") = "12300"

LENGTH(string)

The result is the number of characters in string.

LINEIN([file] [,[line] [,count]])

Inputs a line from a file. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

LINEOUT([file] [,[string] [,line]])

Outputs a line to a file. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

LINES([file])

Determines whether lines can be read from a file. See the section on the
REXX I/O model.

LINESIZE()

The function attempts to find out the terminal width using a TIOCGWINSZ
ioctl on the terminal, and returns the answer. If the ioctl returns an
error (for instance because there is no controlling terminal), then
zero is returned.

MAX(number[,number...])

This function returns the maximum of a non-empty list of numbers.

MIN(number[,number...])

This function returns the minimum of a non-empty list of numbers.

OPEN(path [,[mode] [,file]])

Opens a file for reading and/or writing. See the section on the REXX I/O
model.

OVERLAY(new,target[,[position][,[length][,pad]]])

The new string is padded or truncated to the given length and overlaid
on to the target string starting at the given position.  The default
position is 1, that is, the start of the target string.

PCLOSE(file)

Closes a file which was opened by POPEN. See the section on the REXX I/O
model.

POPEN(command [,[mode] [,file]])

Opens a pipe to a shell command. See the section on the REXX I/O model.

POS(needle,haystack[,position])

This function finds the first occurrence, if any, of needle within
haystack. The answer is the position of the occurrence if there is one
(starting from 1) or zero if needle does not occur in haystack. If the
optional position is supplied, the search starts from this position
instead of 1.  If the needle is the null string, zero is returned.

QUEUED()

This function returns the number of entries on the REXX stack.

RANDOM([min][,[max][,seed]])

A pseudo-random number is returned. If no arguments are supplied, the
number will be between 0 and 999 (inclusive). If one argument is supplied
then the result will be between 0 and that number. If both min and max
are given, then the result will be between min and max inclusive.
min must be no greater than max and the magnitude of the range (that is,
max - min) must not exceed 100000.  min, max and seed must be whole
numbers if they are specified.

Usually the third argument (the seed) is not supplied. In this case, on
the first call to this function the random number generator is seeded
from the system clock, and the seed is not affected on further calls, so
that a `good' sequence of random numbers is obtained.

The seed may be set to a specific value on each call by supplying the
third argument. To gain a predictable sequence of random numbers, the
seed is specified on the first call but not on subsequent calls.

REVERSE(string)

The function returns the reverse of string.

RIGHT(string,length[,pad])

In a similar manner to LEFT, this function returns the rightmost
"length" characters of string. If the string is too short then it is
padded on the left with spaces, or with the pad character if this is
supplied.

RXFUNCADD(rexxname,module,sysname)

This function attempts to register a function stored in a shared object
and returns zero if it was successful.  (This is simply an interface to
the API call RexxRegisterFunctionDll - see the technical reference - and
the possible return values are the same as those returned by that API
call.)

The "rexxname" parameter gives the name by which the function will
henceforth be known in Rexx.  The "module" parameter gives the name of
the shared object containing the function, and the "sysname" parameter
gives the name by which the function entry point is known in the shared
object.  The object will be searched for in the path given by the
environment variable REXXLIB or (if that is not set) REXXFUNC; if these
are not set then the compile-time default is used.  The module name will
be used unamended; if this is not found then ".rxfn" will be appended and
the search repeated.

NOTE: Since registered functions in REXX/imc are case sensitive, this
function will register the function twice: once with the given name and
once with an uppercased version of the given name (unless the given name
was already in upper case).  This allows you to say, for example:

   call RxFuncAdd "SysLoadFuncs","rxsysfn","SysLoadFuncs"
   call SysLoadFuncs

which would not otherwise work because the first line registers a
function called "SysLoadFuncs" whereas the second line looks for
"SYSLOADFUNCS".  The return value will be zero only if both operations
succeeded.

NOTE: Unlike the OS/2 version of this function, the REXX/imc version
attempts to load the function immediately and will return non-zero if the
function could not be found.

RXFUNCDROP(function)

This function attempts to deregister a function and returns zero
on success (otherwise the return value is 1).  A function can be
deregistered if it was loaded with RXFUNCADD, registered via the API or
auto-loaded.

In a similar manner to that of RXFUNCADD, this function will deregister
the name twice - once as given and once in upper case.  Zero is returned
if either operation succeeded.

RXFUNCQUERY(function)

This function returns zero if the given function is registered (that is,
it was loaded with RXFUNCADD, registered via the API or auto-loaded) and
1 otherwise.

As with RXFUNCDROP, this function will return zero if the name is
registered either verbatim or in upper case.

SOURCELINE([i])

If i is omitted, then the result is the number of lines in the program.
Otherwise, i must be an integer between 1 and sourceline() and the result
is the ith program line.

SPACE(s[,[count][,pad]])

This function formats the blank-delimited words of s with "count" pad
characters between each word and with no leading or trailing blanks.
The default for "count" is 1, and the default pad character is a space.
If "count" is 0 then all blanks are removed.

STREAM(stream[,[option][,command]])

This function examines or executes a command upon a stream.  See the
section on the REXX I/O model for more information.

STRIP(string[,[option][,char]])

Up to three parameters may be supplied. The first is a string upon which
the operation is performed - this normally consists of stripping leading
and trailing spaces. The second parameter, if supplied, must start with
one of the letters "L", "T" or "B". This means strip leading spaces,
trailing spaces, or both, respectively. The third parameter, if
supplied, must be a single character, in which case this character is
stripped instead of spaces.

Example: strip("000123450","l","0") = "123450"

SUBSTR(string,position[,length[,pad]])

This function makes a substring of string. Usually the parameters
string, position and length are supplied and the result is the
substring of string of length "length" starting at the "position"th
character - so
   substr("abcdefg",3,2) = "cd".
If the length is omitted, then the substring continues to the end of the
string - so
   substr("abcdefg",4) = "defg".
If part of the substring requested is outside of string, then spaces are
added - or if the parameter pad is given, this character is used to pad
the result. Thus
   substr("abc",2,4,"0") = "bc00" and substr("abc",-1) = "  abc".

LOCAL: REXX/imc allows the position to be a negative whole number.

SUBWORD(string,position[,count])

A substring of the given string is returned, starting at the
"position"th blank-delimited word, and of length "count" words. If
"count" is not specified, then the rest of the string, starting at the
"position"th word, is returned. The result never contains leading or
trailing blanks, but it contains all spaces between the words extracted.

SYMBOL(name)

The argument is interpreted as a symbol (or a number); it is uppercased,
and if it is a compound symbol, any simple symbol components of the tail
are substituted in as with the VALUE function. The result is the three
character string "BAD", indicating that the name is not a valid symbol,
"VAR", indicating that the name is a variable (i.e. a symbol which has
been assigned a value), or "LIT", indicating that the name is either a
constant symbol or a symbol without a value.  For example, the program:
   b='*'; a.b=5
   say symbol('a') symbol('b') symbol('a.B') symbol(A.b)
   say symbol('a.*') symbol('b.a') symbol('b.*')
would say "LIT VAR VAR LIT" and "BAD LIT BAD".

TIME([option][,time[,option]])

The TIME function has three uses:
 - to return information about the current local time;
 - to operate an elapsed time counter, and
 - to convert a time from one format to another.

In order to return information about the current local time, a single
optional parameter is supplied whose first letter must match that of one
of the formatting options listed below.  If the parameter is omitted then
'N' is assumed.

Civil   - The time in the format hh:mmxx where hh is the hour in 12-hour
          notation (no leading zero), mm is the minute, and xx is either
          am or pm.
Normal  - The time in 24-hour clock format as hh:mm:ss.
Long    - The time in 24-hour clock format as hh:mm:ss.uuuuuu where
          uuuuuu is the number of microseconds.
Hours   - the number of hours since midnight.
Minutes - the number of minutes since midnight.
Seconds - the number of seconds since midnight.
Offset  - the current difference (if known) between GMT and local time
          measured in seconds (positive if local time is ahead).

If two or three parameters are supplied then the second parameter is a
time which must be in one of the above formats (with the exception that
'O' format is not allowed) and the optional third parameter must state
which format it is in.  If the third parameter is omitted then 'N' is
assumed.  If the input time is in 'M' or 'H' format then the seconds
and/or minutes values in the result will be filled in with zeros as
necessary.  This form of the TIME function makes straight conversions and
does not take account of any changes in daylight savings time.

The elapsed time counter is operated by calling the TIME function with
a single parameter whose first letter matches that of either of the
following.

Elapsed - On the first call the result is 0 and on subsequent calls
          the result is the elapsed time since then in the format
          sssss.uuuuuu (no leading zeros).
Reset   - same as Elapsed, but after the time is calculated, the timer
          is reset to zero.

On the first call to TIME or DATE in an expression, a time stamp is made
which is then used for all calls to these functions within that
expression. Hence if multiple calls to these functions are made within
a single expression, they are guaranteed to be consistent with each
other. Note that this means that:

        say time(e) sleep(2) time(e) x
        exit
  sleep:'sleep' arg(1)
        x=time(e)
        return ""

will type "0 0 2.062564" (perhaps) even though over two seconds elapse
during evaluation of sleep(2).  Also, the timestamp only applies to
time() calls within a single expression, so the line "x=time(e)" is not
affected by the timestamp.

The elapsed time counter is saved across function calls.  This means that
although a procedure inherits the elapsed time counter from its caller,
if it should reset the clock, this does not affect any timing which may
be in progress by the caller.

NOTE: The time is subject to the accuracy of the system clock, which may
      not give a very reliable number of microseconds.  The TIME('O')
      function relies on the operating system to return the correct
      offset and this may be unknown or inaccurate.  The TZ environment
      variable may have an effect on determining the current timezone.

TRACE([setting])

The result is the current trace setting, consisting of one upper case
letter, possibly preceded by a single question mark. If the setting
is supplied as a parameter, then this is used as a trace setting for
all further execution. See the TRACE command for details.

TRANSLATE(string[,[tableo][,[tablei][,pad]]])

This function translates characters in string to other characters, or
may be used to change the order of characters in a string.
If neither translate table is specified, then the string is translated
into uppercase. Otherwise each character of string which is found in
tablei is translated into the corresponding character in tableo -
characters which are not found in tablei remain unchanged. The default
input table is XRANGE('00'x,'ff'x) and the default output table is the
null string. The output table is padded or truncated in order to make
it the same length as the input table, the default pad character being
a blank.
Examples:
   translate('abc123DEF')              == 'ABC123DEF'
   translate('abbc','&','b')           == 'a&&c'
   translate('abcdef','12','ec')       == 'ab2d1f'
   translate('abcdef','12','abcd','.') == '12..ef'
   translate('4123','abcd','1234')     == 'dabc'

TRUNC(number[,length])

The number is rounded as necessary according to NUMERIC DIGITS, and then
truncated or padded so that the result has exactly "length" digits
after the decimal point. If the length is zero or is omitted, then the
result is an integer with no decimal point. The result will never be in
exponential form.

Examples:
   trunc(12.6)      == 12
   trunc(345e-2,1)  == 3.4
   trunc(26,5)      == 26.00000

VALUE(s[,[newvalue][,selector]])

s is treated as a symbol, and if it has a value, that value is returned.
If s is not a valid symbol then an error results. Otherwise the result
is just as for a symbol appearing in a program. For compound symbols,
substitution occurs as normal, except that string constants and
expressions (types 4 and 5 in the description of symbols above) are not
allowed.

If the newvalue parameter is provided, then this value is assigned to
the symbol described above.  The symbol's old value will be returned.
In this case the symbol must not be a constant symbol or an error will
result.

If the selector is provided, then this indicates an alternative
variable pool to use instead of the REXX variable pool (except that the
word "REXX" is accepted as a valid name for the usual REXX variable
pool).  The only selector recognised by REXX/imc is the word
"ENVIRONMENT", which allows the value() function to examine and alter
environment variables.  Note that the names and values of environment
variables may not contain NUL characters.

Example: the following program

   a=1; b='*'
   c.a=1; c.b=2
   say value("a") value("c.a") value("c.b") value("d.b",6)
   say value("d.*")

will output "1 1 2 D.*" then give an error, because "*" is not allowed
as a component of a symbol (however "b" is, even if b="*").  The value
of d.b after executing these lines will be 6.

The instructions

   a=value("FOO","ENVIRONMENT")
   call value "FOO","bar","ENVIRONMENT"

are similar to the instructions

   a=getenv("FOO")
   call putenv "FOO=bar"

respectively.

VERIFY(string,reference[,[option][,position]])

This verifies that the string contains only characters from reference
and returns 0 if this is true. Otherwise the result is the position of
the first character in string which is not in reference.
   If the option is specified, its first letter must be either 'N'
(nomatch) or 'M' (match).  The action for 'N' is as described above.
If 'M' is specified then the result is the position of the first
character which matches a character from the reference, and 0 if no
character from reference was found in the string.
   If the position is given, the verification starts from this position
in the string instead of from the beginning.

Examples:
   verify('123','1234567890')           = 0
   verify('1Z3','1234567890')           = 2
   verify('AB4T','1234567890','M')      = 3
   verify('1P3Q4','1234567890',,3)      = 4

WORD(string,position)

This function returns the "position"th blank-delimited word in string,
and is identical to SUBWORD(string,position,1). If there are not
"position" words in string then the empty string is returned.

WORDINDEX(string,position)

This function returns the character position of the "position"th
blank-delimited word in string, or 0 if there are not that many words
in string.

WORDLENGTH(string,position)

This function returns the length of the "position"th blank-delimited
word in string, and is identical to LENGTH(WORD(string,position)). If
there are not that many words in string then 0 is returned.

WORDPOS(phrase,string[,position])

This is a word-oriented version of POS. It returns the word number of
the first occurrence of the phrase in the string. If "position" is
specified, the the search starts at the specified word number instead
of the beginning.  If phrase contains no words, then 0 is returned.
   phrase is a sequence of blank-delimited words which must be present
in sequence in the string and match exactly, except that multiple
blanks between words are treated as single blanks, and leading and
trailing blanks are ignored.
   This function replaces the FIND function from VMREXX.

WORDS(string)

This function returns the number of blank-delimited words in the string.

XRANGE([a[,b]])

This function returns a range of ascii characters in a string. If they
are supplied, a and b must be single characters. The defualt values for
a and b are '00'x and 'ff'x respectively. The result is a string
consisting of ascii characters in sequence starting with a and ending
with b. If a>b then a string of (b-a+257) characters is returned,
starting at a and ending at b, wrapping around from 'ff'x to '00'x.

UNIX Specific Functions:

The following functions are built into this version of REXX, although
they are not standard REXX functions. Most of these functions appear in
the literature.

NOTE: many of these functions which accept string arguments will ignore
      any characters after (and including) a "00"x character.

CHDIR(directory)

This function attempts to change to the named directory, and returns an
error code. The code is zero if no error occurred, otherwise the message
corresponding to the code can be obtained with the ERRORTEXT function
by first adding 100 to the number.

GETCWD()

The current working directory name is returned. If an error occurs while
attempting to name the current directory then an error message is
returned instead. The first character of the result is a `/' if and only
if no error occurred.

GETENV(name)

If the current environment contains the named variable, then its value is
returned. Otherwise an empty string is returned.

This call is equivalent to VALUE(name,,"ENVIRONMENT"), and it may be
deleted in a future release.

PUTENV(string)

The string must be of the form "variable=value". The specified
environment variable is set to the given value and zero is returned.
If an error occurs then 1 is returned.

This call is similar to VALUE(variable,value,"ENVIRONMENT"), and it may
be deleted in a future release.

SYSTEM(s)

This function takes the string s, passes it to a bourne shell, and
returns as a result all text produced by that shell command on the
standard output. This function has a side effect, namely that the
variable `rc' is set to the exit status of the shell, or -1 if the shell
couldn't be invoked for some reason.  This may in turn cause the
condition "ERROR" or "FAILURE" to be trapped (see the SIGNAL ON and
CALL ON instructions).  Except in the case that a "SIGNAL" occurs,
there will always be a result whatever the return code, but it may be
the null string if an error occurred (or if the command produced no
output).

USERID()

The result is the login-name corresponding to the owner of the
interpreter process. If that cannot be determined for some reason, an
empty string is returned.

Mathematical Functions

The following functions are supplied as an external function package
called rxmathfn.  Either a REXX program or a dynamically-loadable
object may be used (see the section on function invocation).

All the functions described below give results according to the current
setting of NUMERIC DIGITS, but they use floating-point maths so a maximum
of about 16 digits of accuracy may be obtained.  The exception is the
square root function, which can always give the required number of
digits of accuracy (subject to machine resources).

ACOS(x)      the arc-cosine of x in radians (0<=acos(x)<=pi)
ASIN(x)      the arc-sine of x in radians (-pi/2<=asin(x)<=pi/2)
ATAN(x)      the arc-tangent of x in radians (-pi/2<=atan(x)<=pi/2)
COS(x)       the cosine of x radians
EXP(x)       the exponential of x (2.718281... to the power x)
LN(x)        the natural logarithm of x (x>0)
SIN(x)       the sine of x radians
SQRT(x)      the square root of x (x>=0) [arbitrary precision possible]
TAN(x)       the tangent of x radians (x <> pi/2)
TOPOWER(x,y) x to the power y (like x**y except non-integer values
             of y are allowed).  If y=0 then the result is 1.  If x=0
             and y>0 then the result is 0.  Otherwise the result is
             exp(y*ln(x)).
_________________________________________________________________________

Instructions

Comments are supported, and may appear anywhere that a space can, with
the exception that comments are not allowed within a multi-character
operator (e.g. ** or ==).  They can occupy any number of lines and may
be nested.
/* This is a comment.  It is started by /* and ended by */.  */

The star and slash characters of the comment delimiters must not be
separated by whitespace.

Each command must usually appear all on one line. The exception to this
rule is when a line ends with a comma. In this instance, the comma is
deleted and the next line appended with a space. Multiple lines may be
appended in this way. Thus
   say,          /* spaces and/or comments may follow the comma */
   "this is",
   "a test"
will actually be interpreted as
   say "this is" "a test"
and will result in
   this is a test

Note that quotation marks must always be closed before the end of a line.
For example, the following will cause an error:
   say "this is,
   a test"

Instructions may be separated by semicolons or by the ends of lines.

The following REXX commands are currently implemented. They are displayed
in upper case, but may be typed in mixed case.

Square brackets indicate optional parts of constructions.
_________________________________________________________________________

NOP

This does nothing. It is provided for situations such as
IF xxxx THEN NOP ELSE yyyy.
_________________________________________________________________________

SAY [expression]

The expression is evaluated and displayed on the standard output,
followed by a newline character. If no expression is supplied then just
the newline character is output.

LOCAL: The command:  SAYN expression
       evaluates the expression and displays it without a newline
       character.  Note that a similar effect can be obtained with
       the function call charout, though the output may have to be
       flushed by calling charout a second time with no parameters.
_________________________________________________________________________

symbol=value

If `symbol' is a simple or compound symbol then it is assigned the value
`value', so that assignment in REXX has the usual meaning. A compound
symbol is subject to the usual substitution of qualifiers.

If `symbol' is a stem, then all possible compound symbols which start
with the given stem are assigned the value `value'.

Variables are allowed to have the same names as REXX keywords, with the
exception of some keywords within particular commands (e.g. "until" in a
DO construction). The following rule is applied, in order to distinguish
between an assignment and any other command: if the first word in the
line is followed by an `=' (after optional spaces), then it is an
assignment. This does not apply, however, to constant symbols, which can
not be assigned to.
_________________________________________________________________________

DROP symbol [symbol,...]

The DROP command un-assigns each symbol named after the DROP keyword.
Simple or compound symbols or stems may be dropped. If the symbol is a
stem, then all compound symbols starting with that stem are dropped.

If a variable has been passed to a procedure with the PROCEDURE EXPOSE
construction, then the variable in the calling procedure will be dropped
also. If a dropped symbol is subsequently assigned a value, then the
variable will also be assigned that value in the calling procedure.

It is not an error to DROP a non-existent symbol, or to DROP a symbol
twice.

NOTE: Even if a compound variable is dropped, its value will always be
      undefined immediately after the drop.  For example,
         stem.="Some value"
         drop stem.6
         say stem.5 stem.6 stem.7
      makes stem.6 undefined and says "Some value STEM.6 Some value".
_________________________________________________________________________

EXIT [expression]

The EXIT instruction returns control from a program to its most recent
external caller. This will either be a rexx external call (that is,
`CALL name' or `name()' where name is the name of the REXX program rather
than an internal or builtin function name) or a UNIX command, if the
program was not called by another REXX program. All the current DO,
SELECT, INTERPRET and internal call structures are terminated, and
control resumes at the point of the most recent external call. An
expression may follow the EXIT statement; this is passed back to the
caller in the same way as in the RETURN statement. If control is returned
back to UNIX, then the expression must be an integer if it is supplied,
and it is used as the exit value of the interpreter. If no value is
supplied then the exit code will be zero.

Note that reching the end of a program is the same as executing "EXIT".
In other words, reaching the end of a program terminates all internal
function calls.
_________________________________________________________________________

NUMERIC parameter value

NUMERIC DIGITS n
NUMERIC FUZZ n
NUMERIC FORM   SCIENTIFIC
             | ENGINEERING
             | "string constant"
             | [VALUE] expression

The expression evaluator uses arbitrary length arithmetic for numeric
operations. The precision to which operations are carried out by the
evaluator may be altered using the NUMERIC DIGITS command, and is
initially 9. The number supplied will be the number of digits kept after
each operation, not including the decimal point, or leading zeros, which
are dropped by all arithmetic operations. The upper limit for NUMERIC
DIGITS is about 10000 (defined in const.h).  Note that a single
multiplication or division can take many minutes at this precision.

NUMERIC FUZZ is initially zero and is set to zero by each NUMERIC DIGITS
command. It specifies a temporary reduction in the precision of
arithmetic when doing comparisons (remember, for all numeric comparisons,
the two operands are subtracted and the result is compared with zero. It
is the precision of the subtraction which is affected by NUMERIC FUZZ).
The upper limit for NUMERIC FUZZ is clearly one less than the current
value of NUMERIC DIGITS.

NUMERIC FORM is used to set the form of exponents to either `scientific'
mode or `engineering' mode. When an exponent is used, in the scientific
mode there is always precisely one digit, which is non-zero, before the
decimal point. In engineering mode, there are up to three digits before
the decimal point, and the exponent is always a multiple of three.
   If an expression is used, it must evaluate to "SCIENTIFIC" or
"ENGINEERING" in upper case. If the expression does not start with a
symbol or string constant, then the keyword VALUE may be omitted.

The NUMERIC settings are saved across function calls, and restored on
return from a function, so a function may set the precision, etc. that
it needs without affecting the caller.  Moreover, the settings will be
restored to their default settings just after entering any external
REXX procedure.
_________________________________________________________________________

DO

There are two uses of DO:

1.  DO
    ...commands...
    END

  This is a compound statement, i.e. the DO and END are wrapped around
  the block of commands so that they appear like one statement and may
  be used in IF constructs.

2.  DO [ symbol=start  [TO  finish]  ]     [WHILE expression_w]
       [               [BY  step  ]  ]
       [               [FOR count ]  ]     [UNTIL expression_u]

       [ expression_c                ]
       [FOREVER                      ]

    ...commands...

    END [symbol]

    where start, finish, step, count and the expressions are numerical
    expressions. Expression_c and count are required to be non-negative
    integers.

  This is a repetitive command. If `symbol' is present in the DO
  statement, then:

    a. `symbol' may be any simple or compound symbol
    b. the symbol name may appear after the END statement; if it does,
       then it must be the same one as after the DO.  The DO symbol and
       the END symbol are compared literally, without substituting any
       components in the tail of a compound symbol, but the comparison
       is case insensitive.
    c. the value of start is assigned to the symbol before the loop is
       entered.
    d. if [TO finish] is present, then the loop is not executed after the
       control variable (named by the symbol) passes the finish value.
       If it is not present, then the loop may potentially be executed
       for ever (unless a FOR clause is present).
    e. if [BY step] is present, then the variable is incremented by step
       after each pass. Otherwise the variable is incremented by 1.
    f. If [FOR count] is present, then the loop is executed at most
       count times.
    g. The TO, FOR and BY clauses may be specified in any order. (Note:
       each should be specified at most once, but specifying one or more
       of these twice will not cause an error. The last one encountered
       is the one which is used).
  If `symbol' is not present, then nothing must follow the END.

  If the expression_c is specified, then the loop is executed this number
  of times (unless terminated by some other condition).  Note that
  expression_c must not start with a symbol followed by '=', because it
  would then be taken to be a `symbol' as above.  This may be prevented
  by enclosing the expression in parentheses.

  If a WHILE clause is present, then expression_w is evaluated before
  each pass and the loop is terminated if the result is false.

  If an UNTIL clause is present, then expression_u is evaluated after
  each pass and the loop is terminated if the result is true.

  A `DO FOREVER' instruction creates a loop which never terminates
  (unless a LEAVE instruction is encountered).

  Note that if expression_w is false or if the variable clause needs no
  repetition, or if count or expression_c is zero, then the body of the
  loop will not be executed at all.

An END must appear for each DO construct, and if labelled with a symbol,
must have the correct symbol.

NOTE: The name of any variable specified at the DO statement is
      evaluated again each time it is incremented at the end of a
      pass through the loop.  This means, for example, that in
      "DO a.i=1 TO 10", the name of the variable which is incremented
      depends on the current value of i.  (Altering the value of i is,
      of course, not highly recommended).

Example: The code

        do name=expri to exprt by exprb for exprf while exprw (or until expru)
           ... instructions ...
        end

will be executed as if it were written thus:

        $tempi = expri       /* variables staring with $ are */
        $tempt = exprt       /* invisible to the rest of the */
        $tempb = exprb       /* program. */
        $tempf = exprf
        name = $tempi + 0

 $loop: if name > $tempt then goto $end    /* "goto" is a pseudo-op */
        if $tempf = 0 then goto $end       /* meaning the obvious   */
        if \exprw then goto $end

        ... instructions ...

 $iter: if expru then goto $end            /* "iterate" will come here */
        name = name + $tempb
        $tempf = $tempf - 1
        goto $loop
 $end:                                     /* "leave" will come here */

(If any of the constructs in the original code are left out, the
coresponding lines will be left out of this example).
_________________________________________________________________________

LEAVE [symbol]

If a symbol name is not specified, then LEAVE leaves the innermost
repetitive DO statement by jumping to the statement after the END
statement for that loop. If a symbol name is specified, then LEAVE
leaves the innermost loop with that symbol as control (i.e. where the
DO statement specified that symbol) - this may involve leaving several
inner loops.  The specified symbol must match that in the DO
instruction literally, except that case is ignored.
  The LEAVE statement will not return from procedures or functions.
  If there is no suitable loop to leave within the current function or
procedure call, then an error results.

NOTE: LEAVE will not exit from a string being interpreted: it is an
      error to use LEAVE within INTERPRET unless the corresponding DO
      occurs there as well.
_________________________________________________________________________

ITERATE [symbol]

This instruction is similar to LEAVE, but instead of leaving the loop
it jumps to execute the END statement and possibly continue with another
iteration around the loop.  The same NOTE applies.
_________________________________________________________________________

IF expression [;] THEN [;] instruction [ ; ELSE [;] instruction]

This construction has the obvious meaning. Note that the THEN and ELSE
must be followed by single instructions, but the DO-END or SELECT-END
(qv) and even IF-THEN-ELSE constructions count as single instructions
for this purpose.

A semicolon or line-end may optionally appear between the expression and
the THEN, but one must appear before ELSE, as above.

IF statements may be nested, but note that each ELSE statement
corresponds to the most recent IF statement without an ELSE. If a null
THEN or ELSE clause is needed, the NOP instruction must be used (as a
null statement is just ignored by REXX).

BUG: There is at present no way to detect incorrectly positioned ELSE
     statements. If an ELSE is detected during program interpretation,
     this will just cause the interpreter to skip the following statement
     and will not be an error. This bug also prevents the interpreter
     from flagging a construction such as "if expr then else ..." since
     in that case the "else" will be considered to be the statement to
     execute when expr is true.
_________________________________________________________________________

SELECT [expression]
   WHEN expression THEN instruction
   WHEN expression THEN instruction
   ...
   [OTHERWISE instructions]
END [SELECT]

If an expression is supplied after SELECT, then this construction is like
a Pascal or Modula `CASE' construction. The expression is compared with
each of the other expressions in turn, until one is found that matches
(using the `=' form of equality). If a match is found, then the
corresponding instruction is executed. If a match is not found, then an
OTHERWISE clause must be specified, or else an error is reported. The
instructions after OTHERWISE will be executed.
  If an expression is not specified after SELECT, then the construction
is a list of guarded commands - that is, each expression is evaluated
until a true one is found, and the corresponding action is taken. Again,
if no expression is true and there is no OTHERWISE then an error is
reported.
  The word SELECT may be placed after the closing END but is optional.
Adding the word SELECT allows easier detection of missing ENDs.
  It is an error for the word WHEN or OTHERWISE to appear anywhere except
immediately inside a SELECT construction.
  Precisely one instruction is required after each WHEN, so NOP should be
used if no action is required. NOP need not be used after OTHERWISE.
  If multiple instructions are required to follow each WHEN condition,
then they should be contained in a DO ... END block.  Multiple
instructions may follow the OTHERWISE keyword.

LOCAL: The optional expression following the SELECT keyword, and the
       optional SELECT following the END keyword are features of PL/1
       and not of standard REXX.
_________________________________________________________________________

PARSE [UPPER] string [template] (also: ARG [template], PULL [template])

[PARSE [UPPER]] ARG template
[PARSE [UPPER]] PULL [template]
PARSE [UPPER] LINEIN [template]
PARSE [UPPER] SOURCE template
PARSE [UPPER] VERSION template
PARSE [UPPER] NUMERIC template
PARSE [UPPER] VAR symbol template
PARSE [UPPER] VALUE expression WITH template

This command is a powerful parser which divides the operand up as
specified by the `template'. If the UPPER keyword is specified, then the
operand is uppercased before parsing.

The "ARG template" and "PULL template" commands are short forms of
"PARSE UPPER ARG template" and "PARSE UPPER PULL template" respectively.

The possible operands are as follows:

ARG   - the command-line arguments, or the arguments passed by a function
        or procedure call, are parsed.
PULL  - the top value on the stack, if one exists, is parsed; otherwise
        a line of input is read from the standard input and parsed as
        described for LINEIN below.  See QUEUE/PUSH for details about
        the stack.
LINEIN- A line is read directly from stdin.  The stack is not affected
        by this instruction.  In general, PULL is recommended in
        preference to LINEIN.

        If a line cannot be read because of an I/O error or EOF
        condition, then the NOTREADY condition will be raised and an
        empty string will be parsed.  The NOTREADY condition is ignored
        unless trapped by SIGNAL ON or CALL ON, in which case it is
        difficult to tell the difference between an empty input line
        and an I/O error.  However, the STREAM() function may be
        used to examine the most recent I/O error on stream "stdin".

        NOTE: If the program is interrupted (via ^C) while input is being
              read, then the characters which have been read in may be
              lost, but the remainder of a partially-input line will
              remain to be read again.

SOURCE- An implementation-dependent string representing the `source' of
        the program is parsed.
        In this implementation, the string contains five words:
         1. the system under which the interpreter runs (always UNIX)
         2. the way in which the program was called (one of COMMAND,
            FUNCTION or SUBROUTINE, depending whether the program was
            invoked by a command shell or as a function or subroutine)
         3. the name of the file containing the program, with the full
            path name (unless no directory was specified and getwd could
            not name the current directory)
         4. the name by which the program was called (always without a
            path name).
         5. the environment name which was current when the program
            started up
VERSION-A string representing the version of the REXX interpreter is
        parsed. This contains five words:
         1. A word describing the language, of which the first four
            letters are always REXX. In this implementation the word is
            REXX/imc.
         2. A string representing the version number (e.g. 1.0)
         3,4,5. The date on which the interpreter was compiled, in the
            same format as the DATE() function (e.g. 18 May 1990).
NUMERIC-The current NUMERIC settings are parsed.  There are three words
        in the string to be parsed: NUMERIC DIGITS, NUMERIC FUZZ and
        NUMERIC FORM respectively.
VAR   - The symbol specified is evaluated, and if it represents
        a currently defined variable, its value is substituted. The
        result is then parsed.
VALUE - The expression between "VALUE" and "WITH" is evaluated and then
        parsed (note that WITH is a reserved keyword in this instruction)

If no template is supplied, the information to be parsed is collected and
then thrown away.

The "ARG" and "VALUE" forms may parse more than one string at once. This
comes about with "ARG" when a function or procedure call (note - not a
command line call) passes more than one argument, or with "VALUE" when
the expression contains comma separators. In this case, the parse
template may contain commas. The part of the template before the first
comma applies to the first operand string, that part between the first
and second commas applies to the second string, and so on. E.g.

 PARSE VALUE 43 56,5*9,hello,there WITH template1,template2,

Here template1 applies to "43 56"; template2 applies to "5*9" and no
other parsing takes place. Note that there does not have to be a template
for each operand string, and also that there does not have to be an
operand string for each template (in this case the extra templates will
be applied to the empty string).

LOCAL: Parsing multiple strings with the PARSE VALUE construction is a
       local extension.

A parse template obeys the following grammar. A symbol in brackets
indicates that that symbol may be optionally present. A character in
single quotes indicates that that character should be typed literally.
A symbol in double quotes is a terminal symbol, indicating the
appropriate REXX entity should be present.

 template        -> [firstPosition] assignments [assignments]
 assignments     -> [nextPosition] varlist [stopPosition]
 varlist         -> varname [varlist]
 varname         ->   "non-constant symbol"
                    | '.'
 firstPosition   -> position
 nextPosition    -> position [nextPosition]
 stopPosition    -> position
 position        ->   searchPosition
                    | absPosition
                    | relPosition
                    | '(' "expression" ')'
 searchPosition  -> "string constant"
 absPosition     ->   "integer"
                    | '=' numexpr
 relPosition     ->   '+' numexpr
                    | '-' numexpr
 numexpr         ->   "integer"
                    | '(' "integer expression" ')'

Each position symbol in this grammar indicates a column number to the
parser. Positions are translated to column numbers (numbered from 1 up to
l+1, where l is the length of the string being parsed) in the following
way. Note that the absPosition indicator "1" is implicitly present
before and after any parse template.

absPosition:    gives the column number directly, except that numbers not
                between 1 and l+1 are translated into 1 or l+1 as
                appropriate.
searchPosition: searches for the given string constant in the string
                being parsed, starting from the most recent column number
                Usually, two column numbers result: the column number of
                the first character which matched, and that of the first
                character after the matching string. The latter number is
                suppressed if the next position indicator (if any) is a
                `relPosition'. If the string is not found, then the
                single column number l+1 results.
"expression":   evaluates the expression and then treats it as the string
                constant of a searchPosition
relPosition:    The given positive or negative number is added to the
                previous column number to give the result. As for an
                absolute position, numbers which are out of range are
                translated into 1 or l+1 as appropriate.

For example, given the string "hello, world, hello!" and the position
indicators 1 "ello" +4 ! 5 -3 'x' -2 1, the resulting column numbers
would be:
  1  (the given number)
  2  (the first character of "ello" - the second number is suppressed)
  6  (+4 characters from the previous position)
 20}{(the first character of "!")
 21}{(the first character after "!")
  5  (the given number)
  2  (-3 characters from 5)
 21  (the end of the string, since "x" is not found)
 19  (-2 characters from 21)
  1  (the given number)

The position indicators are translated into column numbers independent
of the varlist, except in one case described below. Thus the parse
template may be reduced by the above rules into a sequence of column
numbers and varlists. Taking into account the rule that each template is
implicitly prefixed and suffixed by the column number "1", each varlist
thus occurs between two column numbers. Each varlist is treated
separately, as follows:

Denote the varlist, together with the column numbers immediately before
and after the varlist, as m v1 v2 ... vk n. If m<n, or if m=n and
n resulted from a search, then there exists a well-defined substring s of
the string being parsed, which starts at column m and is of length n-m.
(this string ends at, but does not include, column n). Otherwise, let s
be that substring which starts at column m and continues to the end of
the string being parsed. Then the string s is divided between the
variables of the varlist by assigning the blank-delimited tokens to v1,
v2, ... in order. If there are more varnames in the varlist than there
are blank-delimited tokens, then the extra varnames are assigned with the
empty string. The tokens assigned to varnames v1, v2, ... , v(k-1) will
contain no leading or trailing blanks, but the token assigned to vk will
contain all blanks which occur after v(k-1), except for the one blank
immediately after v(k-1).

Each varname is either a symbol name or a dot. If the varname is a dot,
then the token which would be assigned to it is thrown away. Otherwise
the token is assigned to it in the usual way, just as if there had been
an instruction: symbol = token

NOTE: Most versions of REXX allow only a symbol name between parentheses
      where this version allows an arbitrary expression.

The one case in which the presence of a varlist may affect the
translation from position indicators to column numbers is when one or
more of the symbols mentioned in an "expression" is also stated in a
varlist. Hence:

PARSE VALUE "s/this/that" WITH 2 delim +1 first (delim) second

will assign "/" to delim, "this" to first and "that" to second. This is
because the variable delim is assigned as soon as the "+1" is reached.
This provides a way to provide commands (such as locate commands) which
take any string parameter and also some options. It allows any delimiter
to separate the parameter from the options.
However,

PARSE VALUE "s / this/that" WITH . delim first (delim) second

will not have the same effect, since delim and first are not assigned
until after the expression (delim) has been searched for.

Note that the symbols are assigned in order from left to right, so

PARSE VALUE "1 2 3" WITH a x.a y.a

will assign 1 to a, then 2 to x.1, then 3 to y.1

Other Examples:

PARSE VALUE "Hello there ! etc.." WITH a b ! . "c" c

will assign "Hello" to a and "there " to b, then throw away " et" and
assign ".." to c.

PARSE VALUE "123456789" WITH a +4 b 6 c

will assign "1234" to a, "5" to b, and "6789" to c.

PARSE VALUE "   multiple   spaces   between   words" WITH a b c

will assign "multiple" to a, "spaces" to b and "  between   words" to c.

PARSE VALUE "a  b  c  d  e  f" WITH "b" a b "e"

will assign "c" to a and " d  " to b.

PARSE VALUE "hello-there" WITH a "-" b -1 c +1

This assigns "hello" to a, "-there" to b and "o" to c.
_________________________________________________________________________

QUEUE [expression] ; PUSH  [expression]

These instructions place the specified single expression on to the stack.
If the expression is omitted, then the null string will be used.
If QUEUE is used, the expression will be added in FIFO order (it will be
retrieved after all currently existing stack items). If PUSH is used, the
expression will be added in LIFO order (it will be retrieved before all
currently existing stack items).

Other programs may communicate with the REXX stack to provide data for
or retrieve data from a REXX program. See the separate section on the
REXX stack for details.
_________________________________________________________________________

CALL name [arg][,[arg],...]]

The CALL command evaluates its arguments, if any, and passes them to the
named procedure.  The name may be either a symbol or a string constant.
If it is a symbol, then it will be translated to upper case before
use.

The procedure may or may not return a result.  If it does return a
result, then this is assigned to the variable RESULT, otherwise this
variable is dropped - that is, it will no longer have a value.

See the section on function or subroutine invocation for more details.

CALL ON  condition [NAME symbol]
CALL OFF condition

These call instructions provide error trapping.  The possible
conditions which may be trapped are as follows:

 FAILURE:  A command to the environment returned a "failure" code.
           Usually this means a negative return code, but see the
           section on commands to the environment.
 ERROR:    A command to the environment returned an "error" code.
           This usually means a non-zero return code.  Note that if
           "failures" are not being trapped, then "error" will catch
           failures also.
 NOTREADY: A function from the REXX I/O model (see the separate section)
           was unsuccessful because, for example, an input function
           encountered an end-of-file condition.
 HALT:     The user has attempted to halt the program, for example by
           typing Control-C.  Signals SIGHUP and SIGTERM also raise the
           HALT condition.

(These are the same conditions as for SIGNAL ON, except that the two
conditions SYNTAX and NOVALUE may not be trapped by CALL ON).

The CALL ON instruction turns on condition handling.  Whenever the
specified condition occurs, a CALL is made to a handling routine.  If
the NAME keyword is specified, then the following symbol is taken as
the name of the handling routine.  Otherwise the handling routine has
the same name as the condition.  On return from the call, execution
proceeds normally.  The RESULT variable will not be affected by the
call.  During the handling routine, the condition handling will be
set to "DELAY".  For the FAILURE, ERROR and NOTREADY conditions, this
means that further conditions will be ignored until the handling routine
returns or until handling is explicitly turned on or off.  For the HALT
condition, the program will continue executing but the halt signal will
be remembered until the handling routine returns or until handling is
explicitly turned on or off.  At that time the signal will be handled
in an appropriate way.

Condition handling with the CALL ON instruction always occurs at clause
boundaries.  When a condition occurs, it is delayed until the currently
executing clause has completed, and then the condition handler is
called.

At any time after the handling routine is called and before it returns,
the CONDITION() builtin function may be used to retrieve information
about the condition which was trapped.  The information provided by
this function is saved across function calls.  If a further condition
is handled while the handler is still active, this will not affect the
information which may be provided to the current handler.

When a condition handler is activated, the special variable SIGL is set
to the line number of the instruction in which the condition was
raised.  Also, for conditions ERROR and FAILURE, the special variable
RC will hold the return code of the command which caused the condition
to be raised.

Condition handling will always remain on until turned off with either
"CALL OFF condition" or "SIGNAL OFF condition".  If an external routine
is called, condition handling will be turned off temporarily until the
external routine finishes or turns condition handling on.

The status of condition handling is saved across function calls.  If a
subroutine uses a "CALL ON/OFF" or "SIGNAL ON/OFF" instruction, the
condition handling within the current routine will be unaffected.

A CALL OFF instructions cancels condition handling for a particular
condition.  If handling is turned off for ERROR, FAILURE or NOTREADY,
then the condition will be ignored whenever it occurs.  If handling is
turned off for HALT then the program will halt when the condition
occurs.

NOTE: Because calling the handling routine affects the special variable
      SIGL, this variable can no longer be trusted to remain constant
      when CALL ON HALT is in effect, since this condition can occur at
      any time without notice.

BUG:  The routine named in a CALL ON instruction must be an internal
      routine.  Built-in or external routines are not allowed.
_________________________________________________________________________

RETURN [value]

This statement returns control to the most recent caller, optionally
returning a value to the caller. All current DO and SELECT structures
are exited and, if appropriate, the current variables are deleted and
the caller's variables are reinstated.

If the caller was a function call or a CALL statement, the value may be
any string which is passed to the caller in the manner described above.
If the caller was a function call, the return value must be given or an
error results.  On return from a condition handler, the result is
ignored.

If the caller was a shell (that is, no CALL statement or function call
is currently active), then the RETURN statement exits from the REXX
interpreter. The return value need not be given, but if it is specified
it must be an integer, which is returned to the shell as an exit status.
_________________________________________________________________________

PROCEDURE
PROCEDURE EXPOSE var1 [var2 ...]
PROCEDURE HIDE var1 [var2 ...]    (LOCAL)

The PROCEDURE command is used in an internal function or procedure to
hide the caller's variables.

The PROCEDURE command on its own hides all the caller's variables and
makes sure that on return all the current function's variables are
erased. On return from a function containing this instruction, the
caller's old variables are reinstated when the current function's have
been deleted.

The PROCEDURE EXPOSE varlist command is like the form with no arguments
except that all the named variables are left visible. These variables
will all remain when the RETURN statement deletes all the other variables
from the current function. If any of the named variables are not defined,
then they will remain undefined until they are assigned a value. This
value will then be carried back to the calling procedure.

It is not an error to specify a symbol more than once; this will have
the same effect as specifying it just once.

Simple symbols, stems or compound symbols may be exposed.  If a stem is
named, then all possible compound symbols starting with that stem will
be exposed.

BUG: It is not possible to expose a stem and one of its compound
     symbols at the same time.  If a stem is named and one of its
     compound symbols appears later, then the compound symbol has in
     effect already been exposed and so the expected results will
     occur.  However, if a stem appears after one of its compound
     variables, the stem will be ignored without a warning.

Any symbol(s) in the list following PROCEDURE EXPOSE may be enclosed in
parentheses.  In such cases the value of the symbol is used as a list
of extra symbols to expose.  For example, if the assignment:
     list = "var1 var2 stem. misc.3"
occurred in the calling program, then the instruction:
     procedure expose test1 (list) test2
will expose the following symbols (in this order):
     test1 list var1 var2 stem. misc.3 test2
Notice that the symbol inside the parentheses is itself exposed before
its value is obtained.

LOCAL: The PROCEDURE HIDE varlist command hides only the named variables,
      leaving the rest visible. On return the hidden variables are
      deleted, leaving all the others. The action of PROCEDURE HIDE list
      is identical to that of
      PROCEDURE EXPOSE <every existing variable except those named>.
      (in fact what happens is that all existing symbols are exposed and
      then the named symbols are deleted from the new variable table.
      This command is therefore quite inefficient and should be used
      sparingly).
      The PROCEDURE HIDE statement may not hide individual compound
      variables. Only stems and simple symbols should be specified,
      otherwise a syntax error will result.
NOTE: This means that variables which are undefined when the
      PROCEDURE HIDE statement is executed will be deleted on return from
      the current function. However, if new compound variables are
      defined having a stem in common with some compound variables which
      already exist, then the new compound variables will not be deleted
      on return.

NOTE: As in standard REXX, the order in which the symbols are named can
      have an effect. For example, if i=5 then
         procedure expose i a.i
      will expose i and the compound symbol a.5, but
         procedure expose a.i i
      will expose the compound symbol a.I and i. This is because the
      names are processed from left to right, and in the latter case the
      symbol i is not visible when the name a.i is encountered.

The PROCEDURE command will almost invariably be at the beginning of a
function or procedure. It may be used in the middle rather than at the
beginning, but this is not recommended. In fact the ANSI standard
states that PROCEDURE must be the first instruction of a subroutine, if
it is present. In any case, an error will result if it is used within
an INTERPRET, or a DO, or some other control structure.

LOCAL: If OPTIONS 'EXPOSE' (qv) is in effect then the PROCEDURE
       instruction will be allowed at the start of a program which is
       called as an external subroutine or function.  This allows
       variables from the caller (which would normally be hidden) to be
       exposed.  The instruction does not have to be the first in the
       program but it must not be placed inside any control structure (so
       it could, for example, be preceded by an OPTIONS 'EXPOSE'
       instruction).

Example: an improved version of the above factorial program
        parse arg x
        say x"!="fact(x)
        exit
 fact:  procedure           /* now we get a different p each time */
        parse arg p
        if p<3 then return p
        return fact(p-1) * p

NOTE: The special variable SIGL must be explicitly exposed if its current
      value is needed within the procedure.  It is set by the CALL
      instruction or the function call before any PROCEDURE instruction
      is encountered.
_________________________________________________________________________

INTERPRET string

This command evaluates the given string and interprets it as if it were
part of a real rexx program. The string may contain any commands that
the program line containing the INTERPRET command might have executed
except that any DO or SELECT control blocks within the string must be
complete.  That is, the string may not start any new DO or SELECT
control blocks to be continued by the main program, and nor can it
contain an END, LEAVE, WHEN, etc. corresponding to a control block of
the main program.  An interpreted command can, however, cause a return
from a function.

NOTE: Interpreted strings must not contain labels.

Example: This program evaluates an expression given on the command line:

#!/mclab/imc/sun4/rexx
parse arg x
interpret "y="||x
say x"="y
_________________________________________________________________________

SIGNAL [VALUE] name  |  SIGNAL ON|OFF condition [NAME label]

1. SIGNAL [VALUE] name

In this form, the SIGNAL instruction is a primitive form of `goto'.
Using it to control program flow in this manner is strongly discouraged.

When this command is encountered interpretation jumps to the named label
(SIGNAL labels work just like procedure labels - but SIGNAL never invokes
another rexx program).

If the VALUE keyword is present, or if the name does not start with a
symbol or a string constant, then the name is treated as an expression
which must evaluate to the name of a label (irrespective of case).

All current DO and SELECT structures within the current procedure are
terminated by the SIGNAL instruction before the jump is taken.

When the SIGNAL instruction is executed, the variable SIGL is set to hold
the number of the line at the time of the jump. This can be used in
error analysis - as in:

  if something_is_wrong then signal error
  ...
  error: say "Something is wrong at line" sigl

or it can be used to type out long texts or help - as in:

   <lots of argument checking>
   if something_is_wrong then signal help /*
   This is a paragraph of help. It is enclosed in comments, so
   the interpreter ignores it. However the help routine will
   use the sourceline function to type it out on to the screen.
   */
   ...
   help: do i=sigl+1 while sourceline(i)~="*/"
   say sourceline(i)
   end

The SIGNAL VALUE construction is useful for calling procedures with
variable names. This can be done as follows:

   /* procname is set to the name of a procedure */
   call jumpto procname,arguments
   ...
   jumpto: parse arg jumpname
   signal value jumpname
   ...
When the named procedure is called, its first argument will be its name,
and the subsequent arguments will be those supplied by the caller.
The DO and SELECT structures in the calling program are protected from
the SIGNAL instruction, since the latter is encountered within procedure
`jumpto'.

2. SIGNAL ON  condition [NAME symbol]
   SIGNAL OFF condition

These instructions maintain exception handlers for the following
contitions:

 SYNTAX:   Any syntax error (for example "Bad arithmetic conversion" or
           "Unexpected ',' or ')'") which occurs during interpretation.
 NOVALUE:  A variable name is used which has no value.
           NOTE: This condition is not raised during interpretation of
                 sub-names in compound variables. Hence, if `foo' has no
                 value, then "a=foo+1" will cause a novalue error but
                 "a=abc.foo" will not cause an error unless ABC.'FOO' has
                 no value.  Also, the builtin function VALUE() will never
                 raise the NOVALUE condition.
 HALT:     The user has attempted to halt the program, for example by
           typing Control-C.  Signals SIGHUP and SIGTERM also raise the
           HALT condition.
 FAILURE:  A command to the environment returned a "failure" code.
           Usually this means a negative return code, but see the
           section on commands to the environment.
 ERROR:    A command to the environment returned an "error" code.
           This usually means a non-zero return code.  Note that if
           "failures" are not being trapped, then "error" will catch
           failures also.
 NOTREADY: A function from the REXX I/O model (see the separate section)
           was unsuccessful because, for example, an input function
           encountered an end-of-file condition.

(These are the same conditions as for CALL ON, with the two extra
conditions SYNTAX and NOVALUE).

The SIGNAL ON instruction turns on condition handling.  Whenever the
specified condition occurs, a SIGNAL is made to a handler.  If the NAME
keyword is specified, then the following symbol is taken as the name of
the handler.  Otherwise the handler has the same name as the condition.
At this point, RC holds the number of the error which caused the jump
(except in the case of NOTREADY) and SIGL holds the line number in
which the error occurred.  The routine in which the SIGNAL ON
instruction was encountered becomes the current routine; all internal
routines which became active since then are terminated.  All
DO/SELECT/IF control structures within the current routine are also
terminated.  The SIGNAL ON instruction is then cancelled, and another
SIGNAL ON instruction will be necessary to reinstate handling of this
particular condition.

At any time after control is passed to the handler, and before the
handler causes a return from the current subroutine, the CONDITION()
builtin function may be used to retrieve information about the
condition which was trapped.

A SIGNAL OFF instructions cancels condition handling for a particular
condition.  If handling is turned off for ERROR, FAILURE, NOTREADY or
NOVALUE, then the condition will be ignored whenever it occurs.  If
handling is turned off for HALT or SYNTAX, then the program will halt
when the condition occurs.

Condition handling persists from the point of the SIGNAL ON instruction
until the current function returns, or until a SIGNAL OFF instruction
is executed.  If an external routine is called, condition handling will
be turned off temporarily until the external routine finishes or turns
condition handling on.

The status of condition handling is saved across function calls.  If a
subroutine uses a "SIGNAL ON/OFF" or "CALL ON/OFF" instruction, the
condition handling within the current routine will be unaffected.

NOTE: The SIGNAL ON SYNTAX command does not trap fatal system errors or
      the error which is caused when EXIT or RETURN returns a non-integer
      to the UNIX environment (this is because the latter is, in effect,
      raised by the environment rather than by the interpreter itself).
_________________________________________________________________________

TRACE [symbol]
TRACE "string"
TRACE VALUE expression

The symbol, string constant or expression is evaluated (the VALUE keyword
may be omitted if the expression does not start with a symbol or a string
constant).  It must evaluate to a word consisting of zero or more
question marks, followed by an optional letter, followed by an optional
string of characters. Each question mark at the start of the string
toggles the `interactive tracing' mode (see below), and the following
letter, if any, is translated to upper case and must be one of the
following:

   A (All):      all clauses are traced before execution
   C (Commands): all commands to the environment are traced before
                 execution, together with the actual string passed to
                 the environment. If the command results in a non-zero
                 return code, then the return code is traced after
                 execution.
   E (Error):    Any command to the environment resulting in an error
                 (i.e. non-zero return code) is traced after execution,
                 together with the return code
   F (Failure):  Any command to the environment resulting in failure
                 (i.e. negative return code) is traced after execution,
                 together with the return code
   I (Intermediates): All clauses are traced before execution, and all
                 calculations are traced, including intermediate values
                 evaluated during the calculation. Assignments made by
                 PARSE instructions are also traced.
   L (Labels):   All labels passed during execution are traced
   N (Normal):   the default setting - same as F.
   O (Off):      Nothing is traced, and interactive tracing is also
                 switched off.
   R (Results):  All clauses are traced before execution, and the results
                 from all calculations are traced. Assignments made by
                 PARSE instructions are also traced.

If no setting is specified or if the setting is an empty string, then
interactive tracing is turned off and tracing is set to "N".

When clauses are being traced (i.e. A, R or I), when an INTERPRET command
is traced, the actual string being interpreted is also traced. When an
END command is traced, the source statement to which the END corresponds
is also traced.

A program may be made to trace itself during execution by signalling
it with SIGQUIT (on the Suns this can be done by pressing "control \").
When this signal is received, the tracing mode switches to "?i". If
a SIGQUIT is received whilst in interactive tracing mode and if an
interruption has already been received but not handled, the program
exits immediately (as is the case when SIGQUIT is not handled).  This
feature exists mainly to stop the interpreter in case of a bug.

A program may be made to trace itself when execution starts by using the
"-t" commandline flag (see the invocation section for details).

Interactive tracing

In interactive trace mode, all TRACE instructions passed in the program
are ignored and the interpreter will pause after tracing each clause,
label, command or return code (as appropriate for the trace setting).
The interpreter prompts for input with the string ">trace>".
   If an empty line is entered (without spaces), execution of the
program continues normally until the next event which is traced.
   If a line of REXX is entered, then that line is interpreted with
tracing set to "E".  If the line calls a program, then TRACE
instructions in that program are ignored. If the line itself uses the
TRACE instruction, then the trace setting is altered accordingly and
execution of the program will continue after the input line has been
interpreted.
   If the input line does not contain a TRACE instruction, then when it
has been interpreted the prompt will reappear for more input.
   If an error occurs during interpretation of the input line, a message
is displayed and the prompt reappears (unless the command executed a
TRACE instruction). The error does not cause the program to exit, and
no signalling takes place (unless the error occurred in a program which
was called by the input line and which contains its own SIGNAL ON xxx
command).
   Commands to the environment within the string will not set the
variable RC, but will have non-zero return codes traced.
   All condition traps are turned off during interpretation of the
string.

It is possible to make the interpreter change tracing and also prompt
for more input by using the built-in TRACE function rather than the
TRACE instruction, for example:
   call trace r
sets the `results' tracing mode (whilst keeping interactive mode) without
continuing execution of the program.

The interactive tracing mode is useful for the following purposes (and
others):
   - single-stepping through a program (use trace ?a)
   - setting breakpoints (use trace ?l and put a label at the breakpoint)
   - examining or changing variables during execution.

The input line is interpreted in exactly the same way as with the
INTERPRET command, and so the same restrictions apply (e.g. DO and END
instructions etc must be matched properly).

BUG:The following also applies, however:
  - some of the source information is lost, so any PARSE SOURCE
    instruction in the line will have the calling method and the calling
    name replaced by "TRACE" (this does not apply to PARSE SOURCE
    instructions within programs that may be called by the input line).

If the input line transfers control by a SIGNAL instruction, then control
is immediately transferred to the target instruction and it is executed
before tracing resumes. If the input line contains a RETURN or EXIT
instruction, then execution returns to the caller and continues to the
end of the current statement. The return may cause a change in the
tracing mode, since this is saved across function calls. However, if
interactive tracing is still in effect, then tracing will resume at the
next instruction.

NOTE:If the interpreter has a controlling terminal (that is, "/dev/tty"
     can be opened when the interpreter initialises), then the trace
     prompt will be written to the terminal, and input will be read from
     the terminal. Otherwise, stderr and stdin are used respectively.
     If an error occurs during a command which was typed in interactive
     trace mode, then the error message will be written to the terminal.
     However, all normal input and output use stdin and stdout, while
     trace output is written to the requested file (see OPTIONS).  In
     particular, if tracing has been redirected, then no trace output
     will appear on the terminal. Therefore it is not a good idea to
     redirect tracing when interactive tracing will be used.

BUG: Interactive tracing is not recursive, i.e. if, during interactive
     tracing, a line is entered such as:
        trace i;say a+b
     then the tracing of "say a+b" (and other statements following the
     TRACE instruction) will not be interactive, even though the
     interactive tracing mode is (in theory) still in operation.

TRACE output

Each line of trace output is preceded by three characters which identify
the type of trace output. Any clause or command traced will be indented
according to its logical depth of nesting. Results (or intermediate
values) will be indented a further two spaces, and have leading and
trailing quotes added. The line numbers of source statements and labels
are displayed before the three-character prefix.  An interpreted
instruction or a command about to be executed will be displayed without
a line number.

The three-character prefixes are:

+++ A trace message (an error message, or the return code from a command)

*-* A source statement or label (exactly as it appears in the source).
*,* A source statement which is continued from the previous line.
*~* The result of evaluating an expression which is either a command to
    be passed to the environment or the parameter of an INTERPRET
    instruction.

>>> The result of an expression displayed in "trace r", or the value
    assigned to a variable during parsing or during update of the
    control variable of a repetitive DO loop.
>.> The value `assigned' to a placeholder (dot) during parsing.

The following prefixes are used during TRACE I:

>V> The contents of a variable
>L> a literal (that is, a constant symbol or number, an uninitialised
    variable, or a string/hex/binary constant)
>F> The result of applying a function
>P> The result of applying a prefix operator
>O> The result of applying a (binary) operator
>C> The name of a compound variable (after substitution and before use).

The trace setting is saved across function calls, so that if tracing is
switched on or off during a function, the previous setting is restored
when the function returns. This means that:
  - if a function is known to work, then "trace off" may be placed at
    the start. When a program is being traced, tracing is switched off
    when the function is entered, and back on when the function returns.
  - if a function is known not to work, then a trace instruction placed
    at the start of the function will switch tracing on only for the
    duration of the function call.
_________________________________________________________________________

OPTIONS expression

The expression is evaluated and broken into blank-delimited words.
Each word is examined to see if it is recognised as a valid interpreter
option for this implementation.  Any word which is not recognised is
skipped over, since it probably applies to some other implementation.

In REXX/imc, the case of the options is not significant, and options
may be abbreviated.  The minimum abbreviation for each option is shown
in uppercase.  Options which require an '=' are only recognised if the
'=' sign is present and followed by a valid string.

REXX/imc currently recognises the following options (options starting
"no" are listed under their opposites):

 EXPose              This option makes the PROCEDURE EXPOSE instruction
 NOEXPose            legal at the beginning of a program which is called
                     as an external subroutine or function, so that it
                     can gain access to the variables of the caller.  The
                     NOEXPose option restores the standard behaviour in
                     which PROCEDURE will cause an error when written at
                     the beginning of a program.  See also the PROCEDURE
                     instruction.

 SETRC               This option causes the I/O operations linein,
 NOSETRC             charin, lineout, charout, parse pull and parse
                     linein to set the RC special variable as they did in
                     earlier versions of REXX/imc.  If the NOTREADY
                     condition is not being trapped then an I/O operation
                     which sets RC to a nonzero value will instead
                     cause an ERROR condition to be raised, if that
                     is being trapped.  Option NOSETRC restores the
                     behaviour of I/O operations to the documented
                     behaviour.

 SIGPipe             Usually the interpreter terminates silently when it
 NOSIGPipe           receives a SIGPIPE signal.  This occurs when a
                     program tries to write data down a pipe with no
                     process to read it: for example, the command

                       rexx -s "do forever; say hello; end" | head -1

                     will echo one line of output before the "head"
                     process terminates, and the Rexx program will then
                     receive a SIGPIPE and terminate.

                     Using the SIGPipe option will make the interpreter
                     trap this signal and continue running.  In this
                     case the program should take care to detect error
                     conditions from LINEOUT, CHAROUT and other I/O
                     functions to avoid wasting resources.

                     Using the NOSIGPipe option will restore the
                     behaviour of terminating when a SIGPIPE signal is
                     received.

 TRACEfile=filespec  If "filespec" represents a filename which can be
                     opened for writing, then an information message is
                     written to the standard output and all trace output
                     is redirected to the named file.  Otherwise an error
                     message is written to the standard error and tracing
                     remains unchanged.  Instead of a regular file the
                     filespec can be "stdout" to send trace output to
                     the standard output or "stderr" to send it to the
                     standard error.
_________________________________________________________________________

ADDRESS [VALUE] [environment]  |  ADDRESS environment command

When  the REXX interpreter finds a program statement which is not an
instruction (as listed above), then it evaluates the whole statement as
an expression (if it can), and issues the resulting string to the
current environment as a command.

The first form of the ADDRESS instruction stated above changes the
environment (until the next ADDRESS instruction).  If the environment
name is given, it may be a symbol (which is translated to upper case,
but not substituted by its value) or a string constant, or a string
expression preceded by the keyword VALUE.  The VALUE may be omitted if
the expression does not start with a symbol or a string constant.  The
current environment is changed to the given string.

If no environment name follows the ADDRESS instruction, then the previous
environment is made current.  For example:

   address unix       /* "UNIX" is current   */
   address "MY_ENV"   /* "MY_ENV" is current */
   address            /* "UNIX" is current   */
   address            /* "MY_ENV" is current */

The second form of the ADDRESS instruction given above executes a command
in a given environment without changing the current environment.  The
environment name must be a symbol or string constant, and the command may
be any string expression.  So, if the following line is appended to the
previous example:

   address command "ls -al"

the command "ls -al" is executed in environment "COMMAND", while the
current environment is still "MY_ENV".

Whenever a command is executed, the special variable RC is set to the
return code given by the command.  If this return code is non-zero,
then the command will also cause a FAILURE or ERROR condition to be
raised.  These conditions are ignored unless trapped by CALL ON or
SIGNAL ON.

Two environments are built in to REXX/imc:

ADDRESS UNIX

Each command sent to the "UNIX" environment is executed in a separate
Bourne shell.  Note that this involves considerable overhead, and
moreover no command can make a permanent change to the environment (e.g.
"set" and "export" will have no effect).  However, it does allow the
flexible syntax of the Bourne shell to be used, including piping, I/O
redirection, and filename expansion.

In this environment, any command which returns a code of 1 will raise
the FAILURE condition, as well as any command which returns a negative
return code.  This is because the Bourne shell always returns 1 when
it fails to find the requested command.

ADDRESS COMMAND

Each command sent to the "COMMAND" environment is tokenised and executed
by a primitive shell which is built into the interpreter (in shell.c).
This makes for quicker execution of each command, but note that at
present the only "meta-characters" which are supported are quotes.  That
is, enclosing a string in quotes passes it verbatim (i.e. untokenised)
as a parameter to a command.  In particular, piping, file redirection
and filename expansion are not supported.  Nor does this shell have any
builtin commands (such as cd, set), with the exception of "hash" (see
later).  For speed of execution, each time a command is executed its
path is remembered in a hash table.  The hash table statistics may be
obtained with the "hash" builtin command, which is similar to that of
the Bourne shell (and bash).  The command "hash name1 [name2 ...]" will
search for each of the given names and add the results to the hash
table, but if any of the names is "-r" then the hash table will be
cleared.  The names are examined from left to right, so "hash cat -r
ls" will result in just "/bin/ls" in the hash table.  The hash table is
also cleared whenever putenv() or value(,,"ENVIRONMENT") is used to
change PATH.  The command "hash" will print out the list of hash table
entries.  "hits" represents the number of times a command has been
looked up in the table, and "cost" represents the amount of work which
was initially carried out in searching along the path for the command.
A plus-sign in column 1 indicates that the entry was placed in the same
hash bucket as the previous entry; the commands within hash buckets are
arranged in alphabetical order.  The hash buckets are listed in no
particular order.

In this environment, an unrecognised command produces return code -3.
Any command which produces a negative return code will raise the
FAILURE condition.

Other environments may be added by application programs.

If a command is sent to an unrecognised environment, then return code
-3 and a FAILURE condition results.

The environment when a program starts up is usually UNIX.  The current
environment may be found by calling address(), and the environment at
startup may be found using "parse source".

Here is a simple shell program to demonstrate the use of commands:

do i
   sayn i'>'
   parse pull command
   parse upper var command word .
   if word='EXIT' then exit
   command
   if rc!=0 then say "The return code was" rc
end i

Each command is read from standard input. If the command 'Exit' is
received, the shell quits. Otherwise, the command is issued to a Bourne
Shell and the return code is checked.

Both the ADDRESS settings (that is, the current environment and the most
recent one) are saved across function calls.

NOTE: The program rxstack (in Oxford /mclab/imc/sun4/rxstack) may be
      used to access the stack while executing a shell command.  See
      the stack section below for details.
_________________________________________________________________________

The REXX I/O Model

Standard REXX allows files to be accessed using the seven functions
charin, charout, chars, linein, lineout, lines, stream.  This REXX
version has fourteen I/O functions in total; the others remain for
backward compatibility but may be removed in future because their
functionality is covered by the stream() function.

Each I/O function may accept a stream name as a parameter.  Usually,
the stream name is the path name of a file which will be accessed -
though other meanings may be given to streams by the "open", "popen"
and "stream" functions.

Associated with each currently accessed stream is a read pointer and a
write pointer.  Characters or lines can be read from the file at the
position indicated by the read pointer, or they may be written to the
file at the position indicated by the write pointer.  In each case the
pointer is updated to indicate the new file position after the read or
write.  The file pointers may be also moved explicitly by various
functions.  Note that the read and write pointers will in general be
different, in contrast to the usual Unix file pointer.

Each file is opened by REXX when it is first accessed, and closed when
REXX exits.  Therefore files need not be opened and closed explicitly,
though in this version functions are provided for that purpose.  If
many files are to be accessed, it is advisable to close files which are
no longer needed because otherwise the Unix error "Too many open files"
may result.

Two kinds of stream exist: persistent and transient.  A persistent
stream is one which refers to a regular file, whereas a transient
stream is any other kind.  In particular, ttys and pipes are transient
streams.  The main difference between the two is that the read and write
pointers of a permanent stream may be repositioned, whereas those of a
transient stream may not.

If a function encounters an I/O error and is unable to perform its
function, then it will raise the NOTREADY condition.  This condition
will be ignored unless it is trapped by SIGNAL ON or CALL ON.  However,
in all cases it is possible to examine the most recent I/O error using
the STREAM() function.

The three streams "stdin", "stdout" and "stderr" are already open when
REXX starts up.  They may be used just as any other files, but they are
also accessed by instructions such as "say" and "pull", and by Unix
commands.  Because of this, REXX/imc only guarantees to be well-behaved
if stdin is never written to, and stdout and stderr are never read from.

The standard I/O functions CHARIN, CHAROUT, CHARS, LINEIN, LINEOUT,
LINES and STREAM all accept the empty string as a stream name.  This is
interpreted identically to the word "stdin", except in the cases of
CHAROUT and LINEOUT, in which it means "stdout".  However, the empty
string may not be used in the STREAM function in conjunction with the
the stream commands open, fdopen, popen or flush.

The I/O functions, and their descriptions, follow.  Note that no
"stream" or "file" name may contain a NUL character (i.e. "00"x).

CHARIN([stream] [,[position] [,count]])

If stream is supplied, it is read from, otherwise "stdin" is read.  The
charin function attempts to read a character from the stream, and
returns the result.  If count is supplied, then that many characters
are read and returned.  The length of the result may be less than the
number of characters requested if an error occurs.  If position is
supplied, then the read pointer is seeked to that position (with 1
being the first character of the stream) before reading.  If count is
zero, then the seek is performed without reading any characters.

If count>0 and no characters are read then the NOTREADY condition will
be raised.

If an interruption (^C) occurs during the read, then characters already
read may be lost.

NOTE: In order to read single characters from the keyboard, it is
      necessary to set the terminal into a suitable mode.  For example
      the Unix command "stty cbreak -echo" allows single characters
      to be read without echoing.  This should be reset with
      "stty -cbreak echo" before the program exits.

CHAROUT([stream] [,[string] [,position] ]

If stream is supplied, it is written to, otherwise stdout is written to.
If the string is supplied, it is written to the stream, otherwise no
write is performed.  If the position is supplied, the write pointer is
set to that position (with 1 being the first character) before the
write (if any).

If no string and no position are supplied, then all pending output to
the stream is flushed, and the write pointer is set to the end of the
stream.

The result will be the number of characters left unwritten, and if that
is non-zero then the NOTREADY condition will be raised.

CHARS([stream])

The result will be the number of characters which are immediately
available for reading from stream or, if it is omitted, from "stdin".
If the stream is not open and does not name a file which can be read,
zero will be returned and the NOTREADY condition raised.

CLOSE(stream)

The named stream is closed and REXX's table of information for that
stream is deleted.  The result will be the return code from the close
system call.

NOTE: if stream is one of "stdin" or "stdout" then future input or output
      operations with "say" and "pull" will fail to work properly.

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','close) and may be deleted
in future releases.

FDOPEN(fd [,[mode] [,stream]])

This function is for accessing files which have already been opened by
another program and whose file descriptor numbers are known.  It should
not be used for opening files to which REXX already has access.

If mode is supplied, its first character must be one of "r" or "w",
meaning that the descriptor is to be opened for reading or read-write
respectively. The default is "r".  This mode should match the mode of
the already-open file descriptor.

If the stream argument is supplied, then the given fd will be opened and
given that name so that all future references to the fd will call it by
the given name.  Otherwise, future references to the fd will be by its
number.

If a stream argument is supplied which names an open stream, that
will be closed first.  Note that the new stream will be opened on a
different descriptor, so in particular this function should not be used
to redirect the standard input, output or error.

The result from fdopen will be the return code given by the fdopen
system call.

Example. If this program is called "foo.rexx":

        /* write to file descriptor 3 */
        call fdopen 3,"w"
        call lineout 3,"This is a line of text"

then the Bourne Shell command "rexx foo 3>foobar" will write a line of
text to the file foobar.

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','fdopen' [mode] [,fd]) and
may be deleted in future releases.

FILENO(stream)

The result of this function is the file desriptor number associated with
the named stream, or -1 if that could not be determined (for example, the
stream is not open).  This function may be used to pass file descriptors
on to shell commands, for instance as in "cat <&7".

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','fileno') and may be
deleted in future releases.

FTELL(stream)

The result of this function is the current file pointer associated with
the given stream (with 1 meaning the beginning), that can be used as a
position parameter to the charin or charout calls.  If that could not
be determined (for example, the stream is a pipe or is not open) then -1
will be returned.

NOTE: This is the actual file pointer, not the read or write pointer as
      stored by REXX (though the answer will probably equal one of those,
      according as to whether the last operation on the stream was a read
      or a write).

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','ftell') and may be
deleted in future releases.

LINEIN([stream] [,[line] [,count]])

If stream is supplied, it is read from, otherwise "stdin" is read.  The
linein function attempts to read a line from the stream, and returns the
result (with the terminating newline character removed).  If count is
supplied, it must be zero or one.  If zero, then no read is performed,
and if one, one line is read.  If an error occurs and no characters have
been read, then an empty string is returned and the NOTREADY condition
is raised.  If line is supplied, then the read pointer is seeked to
that line number (with 1 being the first line of the stream) before
reading.  If count is zero, then the seek is performed without reading
any characters.

If an interruption (^C) occurs during the read, then characters already
read may be lost.

NOTE: Seeking by line number is very inefficient, because every
      character of the stream before that line has to be read (unless the
      current read pointer is at a known line number less than that
      requested, in which case only every character between the current
      read position and the required position need be read).

LINEOUT([stream] [,[string] [,line]])

If stream is supplied, it is written to, otherwise stdout is written to.
If the string is supplied, it is written to the stream and terminated
with a newline character, otherwise no write is performed.  If line is
supplied, the write pointer is set to that line number (with 1 being the
first line) before the write (if any).  The line must not contain any
newline characters, because these will act as line separators in the
stream.  To write text containing newline characters, please use charout
instead.

If no string and no line number are supplied, then all pending output to
the stream is flushed, and the write pointer is set to the end of the
stream.

The result will be 1 if the line was not successfully written, in which
case the NOTREADY condition will be raised.  Otherwise the result will
be zero.

NOTE: seeking by line number is very inefficient.

LINES([stream])

If the named stream, or "stdin" if no stream is named, is a persistent
stream (or the name of a regular file), then the number of lines
available for reading will be counted and returned.  Note that this
implies reading every character remaining in the file, and this should
be avoided if possible.

If the stream is a transient stream, then the result will be "1" if
characters may be read immediately from the stream, and "0" otherwise.
It is impossible to calculate the exact number of lines in this case.

If the stream is not already open and does not name a file which can be
read, then zero will be returned and the NOTREADY condition raised.

OPEN(file [,[mode] [,stream]])

The file specified is opened, if possible, and the error code from the
system call is returned.  If mode is omitted, then the file is opened
for reading only, otherwise the first character of the mode must be
"r" (to open for reading), "w" (to open for read/write, with the file
being created or truncated initially), or "a" (to append, i.e. open for
read/write with the write pointer at the end of any existing data in the
file initially).

This function will not raise the NOTREADY condition, nor will it record
any error for STREAM() - the stream will remain unopened (or "UNKNOWN")
if the open fails.  The return code from the call should be checked to
see whether an error occurred.

If the stream argument is supplied, then any future reference to the
open file will use this as the stream name - otherwise the filename
(exactly as specified in the open function call) will be used.

If a stream argument is supplied which already refers to an open file,
then that will be closed and the new file will be opened on the same
descriptor.  The standard input, output or error may be redirected by
calling open with 'stdin', 'stdout' or 'stderr' as the stream argument.

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','open' [mode][,file]) and
may be deleted in future releases.

PCLOSE(stream)

This function must be used to close any stream which was opened by the
popen function.  The result will be the error code from the pclose system
call, which will in turn be the exit code of the command being run at the
other end of the pipe if the pipe was closed successfully or -1 if not.
A result of -1 may mean that the given stream was not opened with popen.

This function will not raise the NOTREADY condition, nor will it record
any error for STREAM().

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','pclose') and may be
deleted in future releases.

POPEN(command [,[mode] [,stream]])

A Bourne Shell is started off in the background to run the given command
with a one-way pipe leading from or to it.  If the mode is omitted, or
starts with the letter R, then the output of the command may be read
from the pipe.  If a mode starting with the letter W is given, then the
input of the command may be written down the pipe.

NOTE: Care must be taken when opening pipes for writing, because if the
      command fails or terminates unexpectedly then the Rexx program
      will receive a SIGPIPE and terminate.  To counter this see OPTIONS
      'SIGPIPE' and always check for the NOTREADY condition when writing
      down the pipe.

The return value from popen will be zero if the pipe was opened
successfully, or an error number if not.  Note that the pipe may still
be opened successfully even if the command can not be executed: it
is the Bourne Shell's job to report that the command can not be executed.
The return code from the shell can be obtained with the pclose function.

This function will not raise the NOTREADY condition, nor will it record
any error for STREAM().

If the stream argument is supplied, then any future reference to the pipe
will use this as the stream name - otherwise the command in full will be
used.

If a stream argument is supplied which already refers to an open
stream, then that will be closed after the pipe has been successfully
opened.  This means that the pipe will be opened on a different
descriptor, and the popen function should not be used to redirect the
standard input, output or error.

The pipe should be closed with the pclose function so that the shell
process may be removed from the process table.  If that is not done,
then defunct processes will remain until REXX exits.  This may be
acceptable for a small number of popen calls, but not if the REXX
program calls popen many times or is long-lived.

Example: the following program outputs in hex, using an "od" process:

    output= "/bin/od -x"
    call popen output,"w"
    call lineout output,"This is some sample output"
    call pclose output

This call is equivalent to STREAM(stream,'c','popen' [mode][,command])
and may be deleted in future releases.

STREAM(stream[,[option][,command]])

This function provides miscellaneous operations on the named stream.
The first character of the option must be "C", "D" or "S" (in upper or
lower case), if the option is given.  If the option is omitted, then
"S" is assumed.  The command parameter must be given if and only if the
option is "C".

Option "S"

The function returns the status of the stream as one of the following
strings:
 "READY"     - the stream is ready for input or output.
 "NOTREADY"  - the stream is not ready; usually this indicates that the
               end of the file was reached.
 "ERROR"     - an I/O error has occurred.
 "UNKNOWN"   - the stream has not been accessed.

Option "D"

The function returns a description of the stream's status.  This will
be "Ready", "Unknown", or the text of an error which has occurred.
This option may be used after a NOTREADY condition is trapped, to find
out what happened to the stream.

Option "C"

The function executes the given command on the stream and returns a
result depending on the command.

Valid commands in REXX/imc follow.  All command names and mode
parameters may be given in mixed case, and wherever a comma appears in
the command, a space is acceptable as long as the parameter before it
is not omitted.  For example, stream('file','c','Open R /tmp/testfile')
is a valid call to this function.

 close      - the named stream is closed and the return value from the
              system call is returned.  See CLOSE() for details.

 fdopen [mode][,number] - if the number is given, it is used as a
              numeric file descriptor and opened on the given stream.
              Otherwise, the given stream is taken to be a numeric file
              descriptor and opened.  If the mode is omitted, "r" is
              assumed.  The return value from the system call is
              returned.  See FDOPEN() for details.

 fileno     - the file descriptor corresponding to the given stream is
              returned.  See FILENO() for details.

 flush      - the named stream is flushed.  This is similar to calling
              charout(stream).  The return value is zero on success and
              -1 on error, which may result if the stream is not open or
              if a write error occurs on the stream.  If a write error
              occurs then the NOTREADY condition will be raised.

 ftell      - the file pointer of the given stream is returned.  See
              FTELL() for details.

 open [mode][,file] - if the file name is supplied, it is opened on
              the given stream.  Otherwise, the given stream is taken
              to be a file name and opened.  If the mode is omitted,
              "read" is assumed.  The return value from the system call
              is returned.  See OPEN() for details.  In addition, the
              following options are supported for compatibility with
              OS/2 Object Rexx and Regina, but note that the command
              "OPEN WRITE" is incompatible because it truncates the file
              whereas on OS/2 it appends to the file.  Also note that
              opening a stream for writing currently also implies opening
              it for reading.
 open write append  - open the stream for appending.
 open write replace - truncate and open the stream for writing.
 open both          - open the stream for reading and appending.
 open both append   - same as "open both".
 open both replace  - truncate and open the stream for reading and
                      writing.

 pclose     - the stream, which must have been opened by "popen", is
              closed.  The return value from the system call is
              returned.  See PCLOSE() for details.

 persistent - the stream will be treated as a persistent stream.
              Changing this attribute is not generally a good idea but it
              might be useful if, for example, you open the floppy disk
              device and want to seek to a particular block.  Normally
              the device would be considered a transient stream and
              seeking would not be allowed on it.

 popen [mode][,command] - if the command is supplied, a Bourne shell is
              started up to execute it.  Otherwise, the given stream
              name is assumed to be a command and the shell is started
              up to execute that.  A pipe is opened from the shell to
              the given stream.  If the mode is omitted, "r" is
              assumed.  The return value from the system call is
              returned.  See POPEN() for details.

 query <info> - the requested information is returned as detailed below.
              The return value will be the empty string unless the first
              argument of the STREAM function names either an open stream
              or an existing file on the system.  The <info> is one of
              the following words.
    datetime - returns the last modification time of the file in the
              format mm-dd-yy hh:mm:ss.  This function is deprecated in
              favour of "timestamp" since it only returns a two-digit
              year.
    exists -  returns a canonical name for the file (or, as detailed
              above, an empty string if the file does not exist).  If the
              stream refers to a file whose full path name can be found,
              the return value will be this name.  Otherwise the return
              value will be either a partial path name for the file, if
              one is known, or the same as the stream name.
    handle -  returns the file descriptor corresponding to the stream
              if it is currently open, otherwise an empty string (very
              similar to the "fileno" stream command).
    size   -  returns the size of the file in bytes, if it is a regular
              file.  Zero is returned if the file exists but is not a
              regular file.
    streamtype - returns "UNKNOWN" if the stream is not currently open,
              otherwise "PERSISTENT" or "TRANSIENT" as appropriate to the
              type of stream.
    timestamp - returns the last modification time of the file in the
              format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.

 transient -  the stream will be treated as a transient stream (see the
              "persistent" command).
_________________________________________________________________________

The REXX Stack

The REXX stack is implemented by a stack process, with which the
interpreter communicates by means of a socket. The PUSH, QUEUE, and PULL
instructions and the QUEUED() function all communicate with the stack
process.

If a stack exists, then the standalone program rxstack may be used to
stack or retrieve data. This can be used to communicate to rexx the
output of a command (for instance "ls -al | rxstack") or to input data
from rexx (for instance "rxstack -print > /tmp/file"). The invocation
syntax of this program is:

rxstack [-fifo|-lifo] [-print|-pop|-peek|-drop|-num|-string "data"]

The meaning of these flags is as follows:
   -fifo   stack in FIFO order (the default)
   -lifo   stack in LIFO order
   -print  empty the stack, outputting each item on standard output
   -pop    pop one item and output on standard output
   -peek   output the first item on standard output without deleting it
   -drop   discard one item
   -num    output the number of items currently stacked on standard
           output in decimal, followed by newline character
   -string interpret the next argument as a literal string to be stacked
If none of the above flags (except -fifo or -lifo) is specified, then
each line of standard input is stacked until an EOF is received.

Each stack item may contain arbitrary characters, including newline
characters, but when rxstack takes input from standard input, all
newline characters are taken to be item separators and are deleted
before each item is stacked. Similarly, when rxstack outputs stack items
each item is followed by a newline character.

The name of the socket used for communication is stored in the
environment variable RXSTACK. It is assumed that a stack exists if and
only if this variable exists. Multiple processes may share the same stack
but multiple users may not usually share one stack because the sockets
for each user are kept in a separate protected directory belonging to
that user.

When REXX is invoked, if no stack exists then one is created, and is
destroyed when REXX exits. If a stack exists then REXX uses that stack.

The program rxque may be used to create a stack process independently of
REXX (for instance, so that REXX need not create one on startup, or so
that stack data may persist across invocations of REXX). This is done
by the program rxque. It may be invoked in three different ways:

rxque
   starts a stack process in the background and outputs two environment
   variables to stdout in the format
   RXSTACK=<name> RXSTACKPROC=<number>
   where RXSTACKPROC is the process number of the stack, which must be
   killed when the stack is no longer needed. To avoid unwanted processes
   being left around when errors occur, rxque will terminate itself if it
   finds that its parent process no longer exists when it has been
   sleeping for five minutes without communication.

   This output can either be parsed by a controlling program or used
   directly by a shell, for instance by:
   eval `rxque`;export RXSTACK RXSTACKPROC

rxque -csh
   is similar to the above but outputs two setenv commands in a format
   acceptable for the c-shell, so that
   eval `rxque -csh`
   will set the environment variables correctly in the c-shell.

rxque <filename>
   starts a stack process in the background which uses <filename> as the
   communication socket. This file will be deleted if it exists, before
   the socket with that name is opened. The process number of the stack
   process will be output to stdout, followed by a newline.

For instance:
% eval `rxque -csh`
% ls -al | rxstack -lifo
% rxstack -num
45
% rxstack -print
[many lines deleted]
drwxr-xr-x 13 imc          1536 Oct 28 16:56 ..
drwx------  5 imc          1024 Oct 28 13:12 .
total 194
% kill $RXSTACKPROC
% unsetenv RXSTACK
% rxstack
RX Stack not found
_________________________________________________________________________

Error Messages

As far as is possible, this interpreter conforms to the standard
numbering system for error messages. Messages which may be produced by
this interpreter are as follows (explanations are omitted when the
meaning is obvious):

Failure returns (negative)

-3 Error loading program
   A message indicating the reason will usually be displayed
   immediately before this message.

-1 Initialisation error
   A failure in some essential service, such as not being able to start
   up the stack process.  Alternatively, some error occurred while
   processing the commandline arguments (in which case an explanation
   follows the message text).

Standard REXX errors (1-50)

 4 Program interrupted
   Control-C has been typed, or a SIGHUP or SIGTERM signal has been
   received.

 5 Machine storage exhausted

 6 Unmatched '/*' or quote
   (this is reported as the program is loaded, before execution. The line
   number given corresponds to the start of the string or comment which
   is unterminated. Alternatively, the error may occur during an
   INTERPRET instruction, in which case the INTERPRET instruction itself
   is named. This also applies to errors 13 and 37).

 7 Expected WHEN/OTHERWISE
   Either a SELECT is not followed immediately by a WHEN, or the end of
   the SELECT structure has been reached, no condition was true, and no
   OTHERWISE clause is present.

 8 Unexpected THEN/ELSE

 9 Unexpected WHEN/OTHERWISE

10 Unexpected or unmatched END

13 Invalid character in program: [char]
   The only characters which are allowed in program text (excluding
   comments and string constants) are spaces, tabs, newlines, the
   alphanumerics (A-Z, a-z, 0-9) and the symbols:
            @#.?!_$|&*()-+=^\'";:<,>%/
   (see also error 6)

14 Incomplete DO/SELECT/IF
   An END is probably missing.

15 Invalid binary or hexadecimal string

16 Label not found: [label]
   The target of a SIGNAL (whether explicit or caused by a trap) is
   missing.

17 Unexpected PROCEDURE
   The PROCEDURE instruction should only be placed directly after the
   entry point of a function.

18 Expected THEN

19 String or symbol expected
   A string or symbol was expected (e.g. after SIGNAL or NUMERIC FORM)
   but was missing or invalid.

20 Symbol expected
   A symbol was expected (e.g. after PARSE VAR or, optionally, after
   LEAVE or ITERATE) but was missing or invalid.

21 Invalid data on end of clause
   Extra characters were found when the interpreter expected a line end
   or a semicolon. In the special case of the END instruction, the symbol
   (or SELECT) appearing after the END did not match up with the
   beginning of the structure being ended.

24 Invalid TRACE request

25 Invalid subkeyword found
   In an instruction such as NUMERIC which requires a subkeyword (e.g.
   NUMERIC DIGITS, etc), that subkeyword was missing or invalid.

26 Invalid whole number
   A function call or an instruction required an integer expression, but
   either a non-integer or an out-of-range number was supplied.  The
   magnitude of a whole number should not exceed 1999999999.

27 Invalid DO syntax

28 Invalid LEAVE or ITERATE
   A symbol specified after LEAVE or ITERATE was either invalid or did
   not correspond to an active loop, or there is no loop currently
   active.

30 Symbol > [nnn] characters
   A variable name exceeded the implementation limit.

31 Name starts with number or '.'
   The name in this case will be a symbol which is being given a value in
   an attempted assignment.

35 Invalid expression
   A syntax error occurred during the evaluation of an expression. This
   error also sometimes results when an expression is missing.

36 Unmatched '('

37 Unexpected ',' or ')'
   When reported during loading or before interpreting a string (see
   error 6), this means that a comma occurred at the end of a line
   which has no successor. At other times, it means that either an
   unmatched right parenthesis was found or that a comma was found in
   an inappropriate position (such as in SAY 1,2)

38 Invalid template
   A PARSE instruction has invalid syntax.

39 Evaluation stack overflow (> [nn] pending operations)
   An expression was too complex to evaluate.  This usually only occurs
   if there is a large number of successive prefix operations, such as
   in: say ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1.

40 Incorrect call to routine
   A call to a function or subroutine specified the wrong number of
   parameters, or missed out a mandatory parameter, or supplied an
   inappropriate parameter for the function.

41 Bad arithmetic conversion
   An arithmetic operator was used on a string which is not a number.

42 Arithmetic overflow or underflow

43 Routine not found: [name]

44 Function did not return data
   When the caller of a function discovers that it did not return
   anything, this error is raised.

45 No data specified on function RETURN
   When a Rexx program or subroutine was called as a function, RETURN
   must be followed by an expression or the RETURN instruction will
   raise this error.

47 Unexpected label
   A label was present in the expression following INTERPRET.

48 Failure in system service
   This indicates either that a communication error occurred whilst
   dealing with the stack, or that an error occurred whilst trying to
   load a ".rxfn" file to call an external function.

49 Implementation error
   The REXX interpreter has discovered a bug in itself, since some
   internal structure is inconsistent.  Naturally, you will never see
   this message. ;-)

Implementation-defined errors (80-99)

80 No-value error
   This is the value to which the special variable rc is set when a
   SIGNAL ON NOVALUE trap is activated.

81 Use of an un-implemented feature!

82 Syntax error
   A syntax error has been discovered which cannot be described by any
   of the other messages (This message should never appear except when
   a LOCAL feature is being used).

83 Label ends with '.'
   (this error is reported as the program is read in)
   Labels ending with '.' are disallowed since a program containing
   such a label may be unaware that foo.(3) is not a call to the
   function "foo." but a reference to a compound symbol.

84 Too many arguments (> [nn])
   A call to a function or subroutine specified too many actual
   parameters for the interpreter to handle.

85 ERROR condition occurred
   This code is used internally when a "SIGNAL ON ERROR" occurs.
   You may see this message if the signal handler does not exist.

86 FAILURE condition occurred
   This code is used internally when a "SIGNAL ON FAILURE" occurs.
   You may see this message if the signal handler does not exist.

88 Unexpected '*/'
   This "error" is no longer used.

Unix system errors (101-198)

   These are the error messages which may result from a call to
   stream() with the "Describe" option.  They are defined by the Unix
   run-time library, and include such messages as "Permission denied"
   and "No such file or directory".  The number of the message is just
   100 plus its usual value in Unix.

Other I/O errors (100,199-210)

   These are the error messages which may result from a call to
   stream() with the "Describe" option and which are provided by the
   interpreter rather than by the system.

100 Unknown error occurred during I/O
    An error occurred, but the system call failed to set errno to a
    meaningful value.

199 End of file

200 File position was out of bounds
    REXX level 4.00 does not allow you to use charin or linein to point
    to a non-existent character, or to use charout or lineout to point
    more than one byte beyond the end of file.  If you attempt this,
    then NOTREADY will be raised with this error.

201 Reposition attempted on transient stream
    REXX does not allow you to reposition a stream unless it is a
    persistent stream (i.e., a regular file).  Repositioning on a pipe
    or tty is not allowed and will raise NOTREADY with this error.

202 Write attempted on a read-only stream
    This error occurs if you try to write to stdin, or to any stream
    which was opened via the stream function without a name in read
    mode (for instance, with popen or fdopen).
_________________________________________________________________________