btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) (12/06/86)
It just occurred to me today that DEC could make VMS friendlier by simply generalizing their filespec for a list of files, i.e.: filespec1,filespec2,... including wildcards, etc. to include "@filespec", where filepec would be the spec of a file that has a list of filespecs one to a line: @filespec, where filespec contains: filespec1, filespec2, filespec3 (or!) filespec1 filespec2 ... (possibly even @filespec...) this would really make certain types of operations easy, since there already exist ways to create such "@filespec" files from various commmands under VMS, such as directory/nohead/notail/output=filespec matchfilespec..., or search/window=0/output=filespec matchfilespec... then, if you were looking to make a list of files, for example, that contain occurences of one match pattern and another, not necessarily on the same line, you could just do: search/window=0/output=filespec searchfilelist pattern1 search/window=0/output=finaloutput @filespec pattern2 etc., etc.... am I missing something, does vms already support this functionality in some way (I don't mean this particular example, but the general idea...) Otherwise, you have to write several mindless dcl com files to read such filelist files... What an elegant extension this would be to VMS! Yes? -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio
billw@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (William E. Westfield) (12/09/86)
In article <1784@ncoast.UUCP>, btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) writes: > It just occurred to me today that DEC could make VMS friendlier by simply > generalizing their filespec for a list of files > to include "@filespec", where filepec would be the spec of a file that has > a list of filespecs one to a line: But that would make VMS look more like tops20! they would never do that! BillW
chris@usc-oberon.USC.EDU (Christopher Ho) (12/11/86)
Note that VMS already has limited indirect file capability. I can create a file called T.COM with the following: /debug t,sys$library:cshare/option and say: $ link@t and the rest of the command line gets sucked in from that file. Note that there must be no space, otherwise VMS thinks the '@' is part of the filespec.
btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) (12/11/86)
@file in the generalization of a VMS filelist would be more like tops20? is that good or bad? it would be closer to some of the flexibility of Unix... is compatibility or similarity between OS systems against the rules at DEC? -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio
dbb@aicchi.UUCP (Burch) (12/13/86)
In article <1784@ncoast.UUCP> btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) writes: >It just occurred to me today that DEC could make VMS friendlier by simply >generalizing their filespec for a list of files, i.e.: > > filespec1,filespec2,... including wildcards, etc. > >to include "@filespec", where filepec would be the spec of a file that has >a list of filespecs one to a line: > > @filespec, where filespec contains: > > filespec1, filespec2, filespec3 (or!) > > filespec1 > filespec2 > ... (possibly even @filespec...) Hold it! I Know that you can do this under RSX. I remember having done this under VMS. It may be that I did it with an incompatibility mode image, but I do remember it. The RSX routines to do this are in PIPUTL.OLB on the RSX distributions, and have been described in the Multi-Tasker some years back, although the best documentation is the utility source kit. -- -David B. (Ben) Burch Analysts International Corp. Chicago Branch (ihnp4!aicchi!dbb) "Argue for your limitations, and they are yours"
btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) (12/15/86)
Since posting the original question/suggestion, I have learned that @filespec is acceptable to some commands, but the file format is not compatible with the output of : dir/nohead/notail/output=file ... or search/window=0/output=file ... which each produce a list of filespecs, each on a separate line (i.e., filspec1 filespec2... which, as far as I know, is not compatible with the @filespec that some commands already accept... what these commands expect is a @file that has exactly what you would type yourself, e.g., search @file, where file= searchfilespec1,searchfilespec2,... pattern list or: searchfilespec1, searchfilespec2,... - pattern list... The file indirection doesn't supplement the command parameter list, it replaces it. (sigh! DEC!) -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio