Object REXX

Object REXX is an interpreted, class-based object-oriented extension of the Rexx scripting language, today usually called Open Object Rexx or ooRexx. It began in 1988 when the Oryx project at the IBM Scientific Centre in Winchester, under the technical direction of Simon C. Nash, tried merging classic Rexx with the object model of Smalltalk, and a first prototype under Rick McGuire was presented in 1992. IBM shipped it with OS/2 Warp 4 in 1996 and later released versions for Windows, Linux, AIX and other systems. Classic Rexx programs normally run unchanged because ooRexx keeps the older language's features and is essentially compliant with the ANSI Rexx standard X3.274-1996. In ooRexx everything is an object, programs send messages to objects with the tilde operator, and the syntax is free-form and case-insensitive. IBM discontinued the product in 2004 and passed the source to the Rexx Language Association, which released the open-source ooRexx in 2005.