MCGUIRE@GRIN1.BITNET ("The Sysco Kid ", McGuire,Ed) (07/27/88)
I SPRed the problem you describe under VAX/VMS Version 3.6. Here's the text. ________________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM A null character embedded in the middle of a command line prematurely terminates the command input scan done by DCL's parsing routines. RESPONSE The behavior that you have described is an integral part of DCL's parsing algorithm. As each line is read in, either from a terminal or a command procedure, a null character is placed at the end of the input string to indicate where the end-of-line is located. Thus, a command line with an embedded null character would cause the premature termination of the parse scan. Note that an embedded null haracter will not terminate the input of the command line. Thus, command procedure verification would not be affected by an embedded null character. We do not expect to modify this behavior in the near future since it would require a major design change. ________________________________________________________________________________ Basically this means that if there's a NUL in your command line or you do quoted substitution of a symbol whose value is a string containing a NUL, your command line is truncated. This is only a restriction upon the parse scan. Ampersand substitution of a symbol containing a null character will succeed because it occurs after the parse scan. Ed