In the days when I worked on IBM's OS2, I fell in love with REXX. The following are a couple of items from that time.


Finger Server

If you feel the need for a Finger server for your OS/2 machine, here's one I wrote in REXX.

The file "finger.zip" contains the server command "fingerd.cmd" and a sample response text file called "finger.txt"

The best place to unzip the command is either \os2 or \tcpip\bin.
You will need to put the finger.txt file in your \tcpip\etc directory.
If you use the following command the two files will go in the right places:

PKUNZIP2 -d finger.zip \

To start the server, just type start fingerd from an OS/2 command line
or start [rexx] fingerd.cmd from a Win95 or NT command line (Needs IBM OREXX ).

To test it, type finger <your.ip.address>
or finger localhost

If you run finger name@<your.ip.address> you get an extra greeting, which can be customised by changing the fingerd.cmd.

The command will also run using IBM's ORexx under Win32, but you will need to change the command file, unzip the files to suitable windows locations and find a finger client.

Convert Explorer Favorites to HTML Document

This one's for IBM's ORexx under Win32 only and Microsoft's Internet Explorer specifically. It will convert your Favorites directory into an HTML document which you can give to others or use as a start page.

Save the command somewhere on your path. (The Windows directory or Windows\Command are best) Source code
To use the command enter the following in a command window:

rexx favorite path > save.html

Where Path is the location of your Favorites directory e.g. c:\Windows\Favorites
and save.html is the name and location of the resulting document.

Load the file created into Internet Explorer to see the results.

Alternatively, if you are running an HTTP Server, place REXX.EXE and the Favorite.cmd in your Scripts or cgi-bin directory and use the following url:

http://localhost/scripts/rexx.exe?Favorite.cmd+c:\Windows\Favorites

This should work with Microsoft's Personal Web Server with the default setup.

For the correct appearance of the resulting document, the gif icons need to be placed in an \icons directory.

blocky