ARexx scripting: How to

[thomas]

That's how Rexx works. Every value without context is sent to the current ARexx host. If it encounters a function call without context, it executes the function and sends the result to the host. If you don't want the result to be processed as a host command, you have to put it into a context.

For example assign the return value to a variable

x = Delay(15)

or use the CALL keyword

call Delay(15)

[thyslo]

Thank you Thomas, now it works

And thanks for the explanation, too. Although I've red the ARexx manual this information passed me by.

[daxb]

IMHO it would be better to use "waitforport" instead of the delay() loop. You also get shorter code. See ARexxGuide2 for an how to use example.

[thyslo]

Thanks, daxb, I'll have a look at that. I'm always interested in better readable code.

[thyslo]

While creating some scripts for GoldED I encountered some questions about ARexx strings & parsing. Maybe somebody here can help.

1) Is there a operation to access the character of a string by index? For example I tried

    s = 'Abc'
    char = s[0]

I expected that after this line 'char' contains the value 'A'. But the [] operation is not supported by ARexx. Is there a way to achieve this?

2) If char would contain 'A' is there a way/function to get the ascii code of it? Something like

    say asc(char)
    65

3) I try to parse a line that looks like this:

 '*** 	CALLxxDOS PutStr'

Note: After the 3 asterisks there is 1 space and 1 TAB character. I only want the 'CALLxxDOS PutStr' stored into a variable, err_context.

Tried it with:

    parse var line '*** ' err_context
    err_context = STRIP(err_context)

With this, err_context still containes the TAB character at the beginning.

So, how can the TAB character be parsed?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by thyslo

1) Is there a operation to access the character of a string by index? For example I tried

    s = 'Abc'
    char = s[0]

I expected that after this line 'char' contains the value 'A'. But the [] operation is not supported by ARexx. Is there a way to achieve this?

https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/AmigaO...s#SUBSTR.28.29

[thomas]

Originally Posted by thyslo

is there a way/function to get the ascii code of it?

Try c2d(char) or c2x(char) as you like.

After the 3 asterisks there is 1 space and 1 TAB character.

try

parse value translate(line,' ','09'x) with '***' err_context

So, how can the TAB character be parsed?

That's not what you want. You don't want to parse the tab character, you want to treat the tab as a space. If you want to parse the tab you can just put the tab in to the parse string. If order to treat it as a space you have to translate it into a space.

[thyslo]

Thank you, thomas, this works great:-)