GCI - call any OS function from REXX

Name     GCI - call any OS function from REXX 
Version  01/2004
Author   Florian Grosse-Coosmann
         (see EMail Addresses)
Distrib. Freeware 
Type     REXX DLL 
Price    -
Note     w/ source 
Source   Internet 
         Name: gci-os2.* 

Description from the author: 

"REXX is a script language with one main focus on calling external 
processes. REXX manages the call itself and the IO from and to the called 
processes. It has the ability to wrap external libraries and to use them. 
REXX is therefore very extensible. 

More and more applications or major parts of applications are put into 
libraries with a call interface to let GUIs execute a special 
functionality. This technique is more or less known as plugin. Plugins are 
handy and extensible, but not very easy to execute from a command line. A 
plugin doesn't have a command line interface in most cases. From REXX's 
view, an external wrapper library has to be written to use the external 
functionality. Such a library will be loaded in REXX's core and a script 
command executes a REXX external procedure or function which calls the 
original function. Of course, REXX external functions can do more than 
just calling other functions. 

In case of pure wrapper code, REXX's approach isn't very handy. REXX isn't 
the most common language nowadays and nearly nobody delivers a REXX 
callable library. These have to be generated by folks to both are able to 
create code libraries and want to use the stuff from REXX. This inhibits 
the spread of REXX. 

One solution may be a generic call interface. This interface allows the 
use of almost every library function call by REXX and its own methods. 
This document describes a definition of a generic call interface as an 
extension of the SAA API. " see the Homepage of GCI for the documentation.