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Talk:$err.rex: Difference between revisions
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-- [[User:Gerard Schildberger|Gerard Schildberger]] ([[User talk:Gerard Schildberger|talk]]) 05:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
==error messages==
One of the many things people want to do with error messages and the like (or just plain ole informational text messages for that matter) is to be able to have part (or all) of the message text in a specific color (such as in red or pink for error messages, yellow for warning messages, etc). I put a lot of time and effort into writing a REXX external routine to do just that, and make it transparent and easy to use with whatever REXX interpreter (and operating system) was being used --- so that if color isn't supported, the message text still gets displayed. The resulting REXX code (named '''$T.REX''') is pretty obtuse because it has to allow the external REXX code (routine) to run on many platforms (operating systems), and that generality takes its toll. Not very pretty to read, but it's something that most programmers wanted to do, but didn't have the time or ability to program such a beast for general (or use in production) consumption. I thought that routine was useful enough to include here on Rosetta code as an auxiliary file (support file), but not to include it as a solution (entry) to a specific (or too narrow) of, as yet, a non-existent Rosetta Code task, which I thought the task requirements would be too narrow of focus, and I have concerns already about how Rosetta Code draft tasks are promoted (or rather, not promoted). One thing that I've noticed is that almost all computer programming language entries (on Rosetta Code) are mostly platform specific (almost all are assumed to be running ASCII computers), and also most of them running on a PC, some even specific to operating system(s). When I include REXX solutions that also run on an EBCDIC system, I feel like a brown shoe at a tuxedo party. Two big examples are the sorting order of ASCII and EBCDIC systems (decimal digits, uppercase Latin alphabet, lowercase Latin alphabet for ASCII, and lowercase alphabet, uppercase alphabet, then decimal digits for EBCDIC). Of course, most of the special characters are in a different order as well. The other big example is that ASCII Latin letters (A──►Z, and also a──►z) are contiguous in ASCII, but not in EBCDIC. It takes some skill in knowing how to write code that is independent of the underlying hardware. -- [[User:Gerard Schildberger|Gerard Schildberger]] ([[User talk:Gerard Schildberger|talk]]) 06:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
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