Extending zsh capabilities

[Mark Hessling <m.hessling@qut.edu.au>]

Hi Guys,

I have been using zsh for several years now and have had no complaints!

What I want to do now is add optional support for Rexx programs into a shell,
and figured that zsh would be the shell to use.

Firstly, would there be any objections to me adding this support and getting
it into the "official" distribution ?

Secondly, what assistance might I be able to get to point me in the right
direction ?  I originally tried adding this support to bash, but couldn't
get it to work; probably because I didn't know enough of the internals of
bash to know where the right place was to hook the Rexx support into.

I've had a look at Zsh modules in 3.1.3, but don't think that this mechanism
will work. Maybe it will, but that's where I need some knowledgeble advice.

Before I go too much further, I'll explain what I want to do and someone
hopefully can provide some pointers.

All Rexx program begin with /* in the first two characters of the first line
of an executable file (much like #!).  When zsh comes across a Rexx program,
I want to execute this program within the shell, but unlike #! programs,
execute within the current process.  So I can't use the #! hook.

Executing a Rexx program within a current process is straighforward, I need
to call the API function RexxStart() with the filename as one of the arguments.
The interface is simple; its knowing where to hook it into zsh that is my
biggest problem.

Any comments, suggestions or pointers greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Mark
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 Mark Hessling                       Email:       M.Hessling@qut.edu.au
 PO Box 203                          http://www.lightlink.com/hessling/
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                Member of RexxLA: http://www.rexxla.org/
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