The Rexx Language Association

NetRexx Open Source!

IBM announced in April, 2008 their intention of open sourcing their NetRexx product. RexxLA and IBM have been in negotiations for turning over the source code and project materials to RexxLA. This has become a reality on June 8th, 2011, after hard work by all involved.

NetRexx is IBM's variant of the REXX programming language to run on the Java virtual machine. It supports a classic REXX syntax, with no reserved keywords, along with considerable additions to support Object-oriented programming in a manner compatible with Java's object model, yet can be used as both a compiled and an interpreted language, with an option of using only data types native to the JVM or the NetRexx runtime package. The latter offers the standard Rexx data type that combines string processing with unlimited precision decimal arithmetic. Integration with the JVM platform is tight, and all existing Java class libraries can be used unchanged and without special setup; at the same time, a Java programmer can opt to just use the Rexx class from the runtime package for improved string handling in Java syntax source programs.
The syntax and object model of NetRexx differ from Object REXX, another IBM object-oriented variant of REXX which has been released as open source software.