JRAMON@ccuam1.uam.es ("J. R. Valverde") (04/06/91)
Hi,
if I have understood, you just want something that lets you
find a file in a directory tree with just one command.
This is not too used nor documented, but you can do it with the
very "DIRectory" command!
The trick is as follows: in a directory specification you can
use a three-point sequence "..." to mean "and all the subdirectories",
hence an order like
$ DIR [.mydirectory...]my*file.spec*;*
would find any file beginning with MY followed by any sequence, ending
its name with FILE, and with its type specification beginning with
SPEC in MYDIRECTORY and all the tree down inside.
$ DIR $Disk:[user...]myfile.typ;4
would search for 4th version of MYFILE.TYP in all the USER's directory
tree.
$ DIR $Disk:[user.*...]myfile.typ
would look inside all subdirectories AND their subtrees in USER.
Furthermore, since this feature is one of DIRECTORY SPECIFICATION
and no of DIR, you can use it for any program that allows ambiguous file
specification (e.g.):
$ SEARCH [...]*.*;* MY_SEARCH_SEQUENCE
would search in all the files contained in the directory tree that hangs
from the current directory for "my_search_sequence" and report all the
files that contain it.
As you can see, there's more to VMS than simply seen at first
sight :-).
There are much more tips on VMS usage. But it is not the
moment nor the place (I suspect) to post them.
--> Sometimes a detailed look at the instruction manuals
(though I must admit they are of the more boring I've met) pays
a lot. But if you look for something specific, it shouldn't be
much of a trouble.
When I began doing Mol. Biol. I never got a direct answer,
just "See the Maniatis". And I learned to do good M.B.
I CAN'T ACCEPT THAT ANY RESEARCHER SHOULD JUST INPUT DATA
OR HAVE OTHER INPUT IT FOR HIM/SHE AND GET RESULTS. How can he/she
know what's going on? Would you trust a Mol. Biologist who never
read ANYTHING about protocols NOR even biological macromolecules?
This is in response to another posting about whether
a researcher should or not learn to use computers. How can you do
Mol. Biol. if you don't know about the structure of DNA sequences,
say introns, promoters, enhancers, homeoboxes, PCR, RFLPs, RNA
editing, etc... -and NOBODY knew of them 10 years ago when all
this began (most hadn't been discovered yet!)- then you cannot do
good Mol. Biol. at all
J. R. Valverde