Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!mouse
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: VMS on/under/istead of/and UNIX
Message-ID: <1991Jun1.203257.26722@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 91 20:32:57 GMT
References: <27075@adm.brl.mil>
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
Lines: 50

In article <27075@adm.brl.mil>, "jochen%[131.220.221.30]"@olymp.informatik.uni-bonn.de writes:

> [We used to be all-VMS]  [UNIX is different]

> (try to make a DIRECTORY/SINCE=YESTERDAY using find).

I'm not sure find is the right tool; ls -l | grep might be better.  But
you can come close with find -mtime -1, though that's not quite the
same; that's DIR/SINCE=<24-hours-ago>.

> You can do MANY things with UNIX in commands but you have to learn
> MANY things before you can do so.  And people which have been worked
> with VMS some time like the VMS feeling.  If you are not doing very
> special things VMS is GOOD (enough) for developing programs (better
> than UNIX? I don't know).

Yes; VMS is a reasonably good system.  So is UNIX, only for different
things.  Both have camps of fanatically religious adherents.

My perception of the difference is that VMS is better at what it does
but is less flexible.  If you want to do something that they have
thought to support, you will find it fairly easy.  If you want to do
something they *didn't* think to support, it will range from difficult
to impossible.  UNIX has less built-in support but more potential for
those who want to do their own thing.

> Now to the feature in short.

> 1. PARSE
>    Implementation of LIB$TPARSE (final state machine using predefined
>    tokens for hex, symbols, ...).  Interface to C, tables can be
>    stored outside the program in files.  Support for call of other
>    tables (modules).

Interesting.  I also wrote something similar to LIB$TPARSE for UNIX.
Mine is a program that takes the state machine definition as input and
produces a .c file as output, which sounds rather different from yours.

> [...]

You have obviously done quite a lot of work.  I am most impressed.  Do
you intend to make the result available when you've got something
stable?  I imagine there are quite a lot of people out there who would
love to get hold of it.

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu