Rexx is a procedural programming language that allows programs and algorithms to be written in a clear and structured way. It is easy to use by experts and casual users alike. Rexx has been designed to make easy the manipulation of the kinds of symbolic objects that people normally
deal with such as words and numbers. Although Rexx has the capability to issue commands to its host environment and to call programs and functions written in other languages, Rexx is also designed to be independent of its supporting system software when such commands are kept to
a minimum.

Many applications are programmable by means of macros. Unfortunately, in the Unix world, almost every application has a different macro language. Since Rexx is essentially a character manipulation language, it could provide the macro language for all these applications, providing an easy-to-use and consistent interface across all applications. The best examples of such systems are on CMS such as IBM's mainframe operating system which was the birthplace of Rexx.