info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (02/16/85)
From: engvax!KVC@cit-vax The ability to reference an indirect file in the middle of a DCL command has been there at least since VMS V1.6 (when I started on VMS). I know it's documented because I've seen it, but I'll be damned if I remember where. I only found it useful once: We have a program called NAMES that shows who's on the system. Now, in the days before port selectors, we used to be able to tell where a terminal was by what it's TTxn: device name was (only had DZ's then too!!). The campus 780 had terminals from several colleges sharing it (this is the Claremont Colleges, if anyone cares). Now, we had a logical name pointing to a directory where software that each campus coordinator administered lived. These logical names were the common names of the corresponding college (HMC:, CMC:, SCRIPPS:, etc...). I got smart one day, and created a file in each of these directories called ".COM" which was simply a one-line, "," separated list of terminal names. Thus, the users could say: $ names @hmc and get a list of who was on the terminals at Harvey Mudd College... I don't think anyone but a select few ever knew quite how NAMES got so smart about the colleges... Oh well, I hope no one thinks reminiscing over historical hackery is inappropriate for INFO-VAX... /Kevin Carosso engvax!kvc @ CIT-VAX.ARPA Hughes Aircraft (formerly of Harvey Mudd College)