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From: MS5U@TE.CC.CMU.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.decus
Subject: Re: VAX C/VMS questions
Message-ID: <12221783537.17.MS5U@TE.CC.CMU.EDU>
Date: Fri, 11-Jul-86 05:42:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: TE.12221783537.17.MS5U
Posted: Fri Jul 11 05:42:06 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jul-86 06:44:23 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: CMU Computer Club
Lines: 48

In article <?@oakhill.UUCP> tomc@oakhill.UUCP writes:
>1)  Is there an equivalent of /dev/null ("bit bucket") on VMS?

Yup...There's good old NLA0:, or NL: for short.  Good for when you run
a program for the hundredth time that asks for an output file and you
just don't care. :-)

>2)  Are there any routines available written in C that facilitate
>    wildcard filename expansion from within a program running under
>    VMS?  I have a case where the C program is invoked from DCL as
>    a foreign command; thus no automatic wildcard expansion is done.

Written in C?  Not exactly, but you can call LIB$FIND_FILE.  The
format is documented on page RTL-105 in the Run Time Library User's
Guide.  It involves some "Mixed-Language Programming" (see chapter 14
in the Programming in VAX-C manual), but it's all well documented.

>3)  I have a C program that was developed in a PC-DOS/Unix environment.
>    I can "install" it on VMS as a foreign command and get access to
>    command line arguments via argv (without DCL wildcard expansion,
>    as stated above).  My assumption has been that to install the
>    program in a more conventional way, I must use the Command Definition
>    Utility to specify command line parameters and attributes, and then
>    use RTL CLI$ calls to access the arguments, bypassing argc and argv.
>    Is this assumption correct?

You can use your argc and argv and then just install the program as a
foreign command in the system-wide login command procedure.  For
example, if the program is an echo simulator located in
SYS$USER:[UNIX_FAKES], you would have a line in the login like:

    $ echo :== $SYS$USER:[UNIX_FAKES]ECHO

(If you want to be able to abbreviate echo down to one letter, change
the left side to e*cho.)

Personally, I like VMS.  (That's quite an accomplishment to admit
around here at CMU!)  Anyone got any useful utilities for a uVAX-I
running uVMS V4.3? :-)

--
Marc Shannon                                                      |
MS5U@TE.CC.CMU.EDU             (Arpanet)                        \ | /
MS5U@CMUCCVMA                  (Bitnet)                       ___\|/___
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