REXX Editor

The REXX Editor is a modern Eclipse-based editor for REXX files. It is the default editor for files with the extensions .rex and .rexx. It shares common behavior with the COBOL, PL/I, JCL, Java™, C++, and other Eclipse language editors, but also provides language-specific enhancements such as syntax highlighting.

Features

The REXX Editor includes the following features:

Syntax highlighting
With the syntax highlighting capability, you can quickly distinguish the comments, strings, constants, variables, keywords, labels, functions, comparison, and arithmetic in a REXX program.
Syntax errors
The syntax checking feature underlines unrecognized statements and expressions in red, which helps you to make quick corrections and reduce compiler errors. To see all syntax errors in open files, open the Problems view by clicking the error or warning icon in the status bar. Double-click the list item to directly go to the problem.
Find all references
Use the Find All References menu item to locate symbols that are not in a comment or string.
Outline view
Use the Outline view to identify internal routines in a file. Click an entry in the view to navigate to its location in the code.
Content assist
The content assist feature provides suggestions for variables, constants, built-in functions, internal routines, and keyword instructions. The constant and variable suggestions are restricted to the current file in the editor.

For more information about these features, see the remaining topics in this section.

Limitations

The REXX Editor is a new feature in the product and, therefore, does not support many of the tooling features that other Eclipse-based editors support. The following list contains the general limitations of this new editor. To see limitations specific to individual features, refer to the corresponding REXX Editor help topic.
  • No include statement support
  • No support for non keyword instruction keywords as variables
  • No support for the following keyword instructions as variables: DO, IF, PARSE, SELECT, TRACE
  • No support for embedded languages
  • No support for hover
  • Some color themes may not highlight all symbols correctly
  • Strings that are missing an end quote do not allows produce a syntax error
  • No property group support
  • No support for the rename function