Integrate Rexx dialects through BSF4Rexx

It's no secret that I would like to see the various dialects of Rexx converge. Object Rexx has done a marvelous job of being backward compatible with Classic Rexx; NetRexx has done wonders for integrating Rexx and Java by making Java classes out of Rexx, and BSF can integrate interpreted Rexx with Java very well. All can integrate with other code by means of external function libraries or JNI.

Unfortunately and unavoidably, there are some differences in syntax between the different dialects. No big problem, but awkward to explain to newcomers and good for the occasional 2 seconds of astonishment. So in NetRexx the method call is by dot (Datum.getDayOfWeek()), and in Object Rexx it is the famous twiddle, as in Datum~getDayOfWeek. As a consequence, NetRexx does not have Classic Rexx's stem notation, a kind of easy multidimensional and possibly associative array.

Now if we would forego the stem, we could have the dot notation for method invocation in Open Object Rexx, like in every other modern language, but it is probably not to be. I suggested this on the last Rexx Language Association Symposium in Austin, but the points of view seem deeply entrenched.

A recent very positive development is that on my suggestion BSF4Rexx now contains integration for calling NetRexx classes from Rexx without having to instantiate an extra NetRexx object - it will consider a NetRexx string a Rexx string and vice versa. Together with another fix for the handling of exceptions from Java in signal on syntax labels, we should be so very happy that our Rexx and NetRexx can at least seamlessly interface using BSF4Rexx.