The Rebol Alliance

If you have the latest (5.2) release of Red Hat Linux, you also have a new programming language called Rebol (pronounced "rebel," as in Rebel without a Cause). It's powerful, it's easy-to-use, and it's free. I've been using it for a few weeks now, and I can already see that it's going to be one of the most useful gadgets in my toolbox.

But Rebol isn't just for those who've seen the Linux light. Versions exist for:

• Red Hat and Debian Linux.
• Slackware Linux.
• FreeBSD.
• Solaris 2.6 SPARC.
• Windows 95/98/NT.
• Macintosh PPC.
• Amiga.

You can download Rebol for any of these platforms, along with its electronic documentation, free from REBOL Technologies. None of the implementations is more than 350 Kbytes, so you may as well download it right now and take a look. I'll wait.

Rebel rebel, put on your dress
Rebel rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel rebel, how could they know
Hot tramp, I...

Ah, back so soon? You can't have taken the time to check it out properly, so let me itemize some of Rebol's virtues.

• Its (interpreted) code is 100% platform- and operating system-independent, so you can run on your Mac or Linux system Rebol programs written on a Windows machine, etc.
• Its syntax is (relatively) simple and easy to learn. For example, to compute the total size of all files in a directory, you would write:

total: 0
foreach file load %* [total: total + (size? file)]
print [total "bytes"]

• It knows all about the major Internet protocols, like email, Web and FTP, so once you've given it the configuration info for your system, sending an email message is a one-liner:

send [email protected] "Hello Swaine's World!"

• It combines the quick-and-dirty convenience of a scripting language like Perl with advanced language features like reflection (it's its own metalanguage).
• It was written by the guy who wrote the Amiga multitalking operating system kernel.

And did I mention that it's free? Do yourself a flavor and check it out.

-oo-

Mike is the co-author of Fire in the Valley, the definitive history of the personal computer.

Previously in Swaine's Frames

Halloween, Friday the 13th, Microsoft
Clipping the Penguin's Wings
The Inertia Awards