I own some manuals for the Siemens 4004. Under OS PBS 4004, JCL is used as well. But I found in some manuals other command languages, in German: Auftragssprache. The job (card) is an Auftragstelegramm. I think nowadays these German terms are rarely used, except for PLCs.
Some jobs starting with :/ (at least under BS1000), on another software with :: Even the software starting with :: and not EXEC. The parameters inside are separated by one :.
The titles of the command languages are not mentioned, I assume they are specific for the dedicated application.
I wonder how the same OS can differ between these languages and the JCL.
I think I havenāt found anything about this in the main PBS manual / RCA Spectra 70 manuals.
Maybe some punched card collections would help.
For IBM 360 I found JOL, probably a modern substitute for JCL. And I found BANG.
Who knows other command languages?
Was there anything similar for other early systems or maybe CP/M?
I know BAT and scripting languages like REXX. There was even ARexx for the Amiga. But I think thatās different.
Not quite mainframe, but in the Prime minicomupter series there was a command language called CPL - Command Processing Language.
I used Primes at uni back in the early 80s but never really got on with them - they were underpowered, overloaded, slow and just not suited to what I was doing at that time (IMO). I have tried to forget all my experience with them, but do recall writing quite a few things in CPL. (As well as everything else they supported)
Wait a secā¦ thereās a 2015 manual for B6700? ā¦ Oh, it is 2001 (2015 was when added to the Internet Archive). But stillā¦ B6700 was released checks notes in 1971.
Very interesting!
I did research about the ICL 1900 (and 2900) and GEORGE long time ago but didnāt recall this.
Concerning Burroughs: I donāt understand āBANG and other non-IBM JCLsā on this Wikipedia page
Is BANG a control language? I havenāt found anything about it. I assume the B in BANG stands for Burroughs like in BUNCH or maybe Batch.
The footnotes there donāt give much hints.
I found the XEROX Control Program-Five (CP-V) on bitsavers. The jobs start with an exclamation mark.
Some people call that a bang - I think thatās the intended meaning in that (confusing) wikipedia page. Perhaps the idea is that IBMās JCL did not use exclamation mark this way, and the others in the BUNCH, with the exception of Unisys, did.
It is the manual for the 2001 version of WFL. That would be running on a machine evolved from the B6700 but many generations later. Even at the university where I used WFL the B6700 was replaced by a B6900 in 1982 (though by that time I was using terminals instead of cards and no longer needed WFL).
I wish DCL and logicals were available under linux. The way VMS handled logicals is still better than how environment variables, sym links, etc, are done.
the ability to gather logicals into tables and the tables into tables was fantastic.
simply switch out a top level table and you could quickly go between dev, test, and deployment environments.
Donāt know if these would be relevantā¦
For VAX systems Iād have a look at RSX-M compatibility mode prior to VAX/VMS Version 3.0
For Burroughs B6700 Iād look at the hardware maintenance language (not WFL) .
For CDC Cyber systems like KRONOS/NOS/NOS-BE/SCOPE Iād be looking at RJE
AmigaOS was a strange beast: built with BCPL, the DOS was TripOS which is a bit VMS-like (not genetically related, but flavor-wise), and the scripting was ARexx. It was almost like minicomputer kind of environment brought to a game console.
IBM had also gone on a major shopping expedition for any kind of new technologies that might help make OS/2 fancier and shinier. It had partnered with Apple to work on next-generation OS technologies and licensed NeXTStep from Steve Jobs. While technology from these two platforms didnāt directly make it into OS/2, a portion of code from the Amiga did: IBM gave Commodore a license to its REXX scripting language in exchange for some Amiga technology and GUI ideas, and included them with OS/2 2.0.
The author of that article states they initially got the licensing deal the wrong way around, but says that they did research it (whatever that means) - itās corrected now.
The AREXX error was my mistake. I just read the technology transfer part backwards when I was researching. Iāve already fixed it in the article and updated it.
We also find the claim in 1998 version of the website OS/2 Warp History
With Microsoft no longer doing development on the user interface, IBM was faced with creating this themselves. In this timeframe, a deal was made with Commodore. IBM licensed Commodore itās REXX scripting language for inclusion in their AmigaOS, and IBM took many GUI design ideas from the AmigaOS for their new GUI. With the release of OS/2 2.0, the WorkPlace Shell (WPS) user interface was born.
IBM gave Commodore a license to its REXX scripting language in exchange for some Amiga technology and GUI ideas, and included them with OS/2 2.0.
then it would be fair to say that REXX on Amiga would have come out somewhere around the launch of OS/2 2.0, yes? So it would have been October 1991-ish that IBM-licensed Rexx would have run on Amigas. Also, given that IBM were the 362.874 kg gorilla of licensing, surely there would be pages of legal gumf crediting IBM in the ARexx manual?
The ARexx Userās Reference Manual 1.0 (1987) also credits William S. Hawes. It doesnāt mention IBM anywhere in the credits, or anywhere in the manual. It says it was written in 68000 assembly language on an Amiga 1000.
I remember buying a copy of ARexx (along with the amazing WShell 2.0) directly from Bill Hawes, since my Amiga 500 only had the 1.3 ROM set. From 2.04 onwards in late 1990, ARexx was part of the OS.
ARexx did its own amazing thing on the Amiga. It was the interprocess glue that helped programs work together. Even if IBM had later licensed some REXX technology to Commodore, it wouldnāt have included Bill Hawesā magic.