The OS/2 REXX interpreter stores a tokenized copy of each executed REXX program in the EAs of the program. Before executing a REXX program, the interpreter first checks if the tokenized copy in the EAs is still valid and, if so, executes the tokenized copy and ignores the source code. In this case no new tokenizing is necessary.
Because the length of the EAs is limited to 64 KB, it is useful to avoid
token images greater than 64 KB for often-used REXX programs.
To get the length of the token image of your REXX program use the following
OS/2 commands:
REM --- delete all existing EAs eautil REXXProgram nul /s REM --- create the token image REXXProgram //t REM --- write the length of the EAs REM (=token image) to STDOUT dir REXXProgram /n
The length of the token image is the second size shown by the dir command. If this value is 0, either the token image of your REXX program is greater than 64 KB or the program has not token image (practically the only time the latter would be true would be if the REXX program has never been run before). In this case you should split your REXX program into two or more smaller programs.
If you're using Object-Oriented REXX ignore the above. Instead, use the program REXXC from Object REXX to create a token image of your REXX programs. REXXC saves the token image in a file and not in the EAs. Therefore there is no 64 K limit using this method. (see also "Compiling" REXX programs)
Note: The CMD replacement 4OS2/32 (v2.0 ... v2.5b) shows an invalid size for the EAs of a file if they are using more than 32,767 bytes.