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From: toma@killer.UUCP (Tom Armistead)
Newsgroups: net.decus
Subject: Re: Quotes on DCL command line
Message-ID: <273@killer.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Sep-86 17:54:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.273
Posted: Mon Sep  8 17:54:21 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Sep-86 06:48:31 EDT
References: <759@oakhill.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(tm) Connection BBS, Dallas, Tx
Lines: 32
Keywords: VAX VMS DCL
Summary: Can U use another character?

In article <759@oakhill.UUCP>, tomc@oakhill.UUCP (Tom Cunningham) writes:
> Any of you VMS folks know a clever way to cleanly quote a single quote
> on the DCL command line?  I have an application written in VAX C that
> does its own command line parsing via argc/argv.  One type of argument
> needs to be triple quoted thusly: '''argval'''.  In other words, all
> six single quotes, along with argval, need to get passed in to the
> application.  I realize the single quote is some kind of whizbang
> metacharacter in DCL, but I have really had to jump through hoops to
> make this work.  Any suggestions?

I have had problems much like this in the past and never found any real
solutions, the quote ' and " are special characters to DCL and never
passed as arguments without haveing to to type a long command line
like "'"+"'"+"'"+"argval"+"'"+"'"+"'" to achieve this purpose, I think
you will run into a dead end trying to figure a way around this.
My solutions in the past have been to us the back quote, `. and change
that to the regular quote in my pgm. I really don't think there is any
other viable solution unless you to a gets() from within your program
These strings like '''argval''' can be passed at that level...

Good luck, and I would really be interested in any solution that you
may or may not come up with

Tom
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Tom Armistead