Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!cmcl2!yale!husc6!mit-eddie!rutgers!clyde!cbatt!cwruecmp!hal!ncoast!btb From: btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) Newsgroups: comp.org.decus Subject: making VMS better... filelist specification generalization Message-ID: <1784@ncoast.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Dec-86 18:23:04 EST Article-I.D.: ncoast.1784 Posted: Fri Dec 5 18:23:04 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 03:19:35 EST Reply-To: btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) Organization: Cleveland Public Access UNIX, Cleveland, OH Lines: 47 Summary: Generalizing fspec1,fspec2,... to @filelistfile... It just occurred to me today that DEC could make VMS friendlier by simply generalizing their filespec for a list of files, i.e.: filespec1,filespec2,... including wildcards, etc. to include "@filespec", where filepec would be the spec of a file that has a list of filespecs one to a line: @filespec, where filespec contains: filespec1, filespec2, filespec3 (or!) filespec1 filespec2 ... (possibly even @filespec...) this would really make certain types of operations easy, since there already exist ways to create such "@filespec" files from various commmands under VMS, such as directory/nohead/notail/output=filespec matchfilespec..., or search/window=0/output=filespec matchfilespec... then, if you were looking to make a list of files, for example, that contain occurences of one match pattern and another, not necessarily on the same line, you could just do: search/window=0/output=filespec searchfilelist pattern1 search/window=0/output=finaloutput @filespec pattern2 etc., etc.... am I missing something, does vms already support this functionality in some way (I don't mean this particular example, but the general idea...) Otherwise, you have to write several mindless dcl com files to read such filelist files... What an elegant extension this would be to VMS! Yes? -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio -- Brad Banko ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb Cleveland, Ohio