gene@rice.ARPA (09/01/85)
This is only a wild guess, and you might already be cognizant of
this, but the name of the symbol for which you are getting the
access violation would lead me to think that it is in some way
involved in the UNIX compatibility library routines that have been
added to VMS C in the recent versions (2.0). In particular, it
probably has something to do with whatever library routine provides
the UNIX shell(1) (command interpreter) "wild-card expansion"
facilities. This refers to the shell(1)'s ability to expand
command line arguments of the form <lit>'?'<lit>, <lit>'*'<lit>, and
<lit>'['<char>*']'<lit>, into lists of filenames (really pathnames)
that match the patterns. The '?', '*', and '[....]' forms indicate
"match any single char", "match 0 or more chars", and "match any
single char in the specified string" respectively.
I don't have much more along the lines
of useful information, but I will offer the observation that DEC
seems to be making a concerted effort to provide a UNIX-like view
of the world to the VMS C programmer, if he wants it that is. As a
C programmer who learned on UNIX, I am the first to admit that the
UNIX world view might not be the best environment for all applications, and
almost certainly is no where near the ideal run-time environment
for C programs, but it is a plain fact of life that until quite
recently practically all C development was done within this
environment, and the vast majority of existing C code assumes this
world view. It also seems very likely that a large amount of the C
software to be developed in the future will be developed under UNIX
because of its *vast* superiority as a software development
environment.
Personal opinion, of course; and I commend DEC for the approach that
they are taking in this matter.
Gene Lege'
Senior Systems Analyst
Oil Technology Services, Inc.
ots!gene@Rice.ARPA
...!{cbosgd,ihnp4!ut-sally,cornell}!rice!ots!gene
PS Although I think DEC is taking the right approach with VMS C, I sure am
glad my employer decided on UNIX and not VMS (or whatever...). Now, if
we could get our vendor's sales-people to stop thinking with this IBM/DEC
mentality, and quote us some reasonable UNIXy prices, everything would be
perfect.... If he doesn't, we just find a new vendor; Now fancy that.