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From: terry@BRL.ARPA.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
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Message-ID: <8607020217.AA10512@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1-Jul-86 01:51:14 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jul  1 01:51:14 1986
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Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Favorite operating systems query (VMS vs. Unix)
Summary: Harder to do things in VMS
Expires: 
References: <8606300055.AA18979@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu>
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Reply-To: bogstad@hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa
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Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
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garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu writes:
...
>1) Any message that begins with something of the form of "I prefer Unix but
>   I'm a VMS expert too and I know you can't do ..." deserves an immediate
>   'n' key. The body of the message can be safely assumed to be wrong.
I prefer Unix but I have used VMS.  1/2 :-)

>2) The C language and the C run-time library are no longer the same thing as 
>   "Unix"! I have cheerfully carried C programs full of library calls 
>   back and forth between my VMS Vax, my Unix Vax, a MS-DOS PC, and a 
>   MacIntosh. It's easy. When I want to create a file with a specific file
>   protection (not that I ever have wanted such a thing :-)) I call 'creat'.
>   Yes, on VMS! What we're supposed to be having here is a system war, not
>   a language war. Let's keep it pure, people!
	You are right.  If you program in C, you have access to all of
the VMS emulations of the Unix system calls and library routines.
However, not everyone programs in C.  Let's talk about the real VMS
system call interface used by the other languages.

	I actually had to program in FORTRAN (heaven forbid) on VMS and
had to do the equivalent of a Unix sleep() call.  Sounds reasonable
right?  Hah!  After spending 3-4 hours wading through the VMS manuals I
discover that I have to do a "scheduled wakeup" for my process and then
a "hibernate".  Of course there are optional arguments to both calls
which I have to decipher.  In addition, I have to call a special routine
to generate the correct arguement to the wakeup call.  Now, I realize
that this is somewhat similiar to the internals of the Unix sleep()
function, but isn't it nicely packaged?  You give it a number and your
program pauses for the required number of seconds.  Obviously not
everything is conceptually this easy, but when it is why make it so
hard to do?  Unix has been termed User unfriendly (with some reason),
but I think a point can be made for VMS being programmer unfriendly.

	Finally, yes VMS is a reasonable operating system, but it isn't
perfect.  I'm not claiming this for Unix either, just that it is a
little better.

				Bill Bogstad
				bogstad@hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa

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