daved@WPAFB-FDL.UUCP (07/03/86)
Bill Bogstad at Hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa writes: > ... > I actually had to program in FORTRAN (heaven forbid) on VMS and > had to do the equivalent of a Unix sleep() call. Sounds reasonable > right? Hah! After spending 3-4 hours wading through the VMS manuals I > discover that I have to do a "scheduled wakeup" for my process and then > a "hibernate". Of course there are optional arguments to both calls > which I have to decipher. In addition, I have to call a special routine > to generate the correct arguement to the wakeup call. Now, I realize > that this is somewhat similiar to the internals of the Unix sleep() > function, but isn't it nicely packaged? You give it a number and your > program pauses for the required number of seconds. Obviously not > everything is conceptually this easy, but when it is why make it so > hard to do? Unix has been termed User unfriendly (with some reason), > but I think a point can be made for VMS being programmer unfriendly. > > Finally, yes VMS is a reasonable operating system, but it isn't > perfect. I'm not claiming this for Unix either, just that it is a > little better. > ... I am rather new to INFO-VAX and the community of users who are on it, so bear with me and any mistakes I might make. After reading this previous message from Mr. Bogstad it occurred to me that he went to a lot of trouble for nothing. It is true that the method he describes for a function that "You give it a number and your program pauses for the required number of seconds" works. but after checking things with the LIB$... routines list, at least as of VMS 4.0, there is a function called LIB$WAIT that does exactly that. Mind you, LIB$WAIT wants an address pointing to a long word F_floating value passed to it, in fortran that's normally a REAL*4, which means if he wants to use a literal value in fortran it would have to be specified as a real (i.e. 4.0). Disclaimer: I make no claims to being an expert of UNIX, or VMS. But it would seem to me that if everyone who makes a statement like, "I like 'a' over 'b' because I can do 'c' easier on 'a' then on 'b'.", did a little more detective work in the o/s' manuals they might not make the same statement again. David B. Dierker <DAVED@WPAFB-FDL> AFWAL/FITC (Air Force Wright Aero Labs / Flight Dynamics Comp Ser) WPAFB OH 45433 (Wright Patterson AFB, Dayton OH) <VMS is wordy, and UNIX is terse; but the real discussion is which is worse.>