KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/06/86)
From: "William J. Bogstad" <bogstad@hopkins-eecs-bravo.ARPA>
Unfortunately that was the only time in my use of VMS that
I had to "escape" from the confines of the Fortran 77 standard and
I am left without another good example to support my opinion.
There are many examples. When I was working heavily with VMS, every
time I needed to do something more sophisticated than a Farenheit to
Celcius conversion I would have to talk to a Wizard, who would tell me
all about how to use SYS$QIOW and MTH$KLUDGE and all about how you need
pointers to pointers to H format quadwords. When I asked why it was so
complicated and so unFortranish I was told it was my own fault for not
using Assembler.
For instance:
1) Trying to do one character keyboard input.
2) Trying to read a file with a ^Z in it.
3) Trying to do DCL commands from within my program.
4) Trying to send a message to other terminals.
5) Doing anything with the clock.
6) Setting or reading file protections.
I now mostly use PC-DOS and find it much more usable than VMS.
...Keith